Doom 3 for Mac Shipping

[MacRumors]

Aspyr Media, Inc announced that Doom 3 for the Macintosh started shipping today.

According to the press release, the product should be available in stores by March 19, 2005.

Benchmarks from the Gold Master were previously posted. More information can be found at Doom3.com.

[Chaszmyr]

Wow, I had no idea it was already ready for shipment. Great news for Mac gamers... at least those with PowerMac G5s and upgraded video cards

[lordmac]

Excellent now I just have to get me a nice top of the line mac to play it on and i'll be all set.

[ZildjianKX]

*yawn*. Priority over the Linux version my ass.

This is great news!... if it happened maybe 6-7 months ago.

I'll test it on my G5, then buy the Xbox version.

[Furrybeagle]

I hate to say it but this is one of things that's just better for PCs.

But at least we have it.

[Dont Hurt Me]

Originally Posted by Furrybeagle

I hate to say it but this is one of things that's just better for PCs.

But at least we have it.

True but who's fault is that? i mean look Apple doesnt offer any video upgrades for anything but powermac but at the same time tells us how great its products are with the fx5200. It forces you to buy the latest OS just to get half decent drivers to play. The blame for Doom3s poor Mac performance starts with Apple and no one else. Come on Steve/Apple i would love to hear your spin on why? sure fx5200 is under 20 bucks each is that why? i think we know that is the real answer. Im glad it made to Mac ( thanks Aspyr) im not glad about Apples use of what i term garbage video. Its in almost every product they make and with billions in the bank there just isnt any excuse for milking your user base as they have. rant over on this one.

[buryyourbrideau]

no care, will buy for xbox, maybe i would if i had a dual g5 and 128 vid ram

[diddy]

As soon as I get my hot little hands on it next Saturday, Ill give a full report.

[SPUY767]

Originally Posted by Dont Hurt Me

True but who's fault is that? i mean look Apple doesnt offer any video upgrades for anything but powermac but at the same time tells us how great its products are with the fx5200. It forces you to buy the latest OS just to get half decent drivers to play. The blame for Doom3s poor Mac performance starts with Apple and no one else. Come on Steve/Apple i would love to hear your spin on why? sure fx5200 is under 20 bucks each is that why? i think we know that is the real answer. Im glad it made to Mac ( thanks Aspyr) im not glad about Apples use of what i term garbage video. Its in almost every product they make and with billions in the bank there just isnt any excuse for milking your user base as they have. rant over on this one.

The game engine doesn't take advantage of processor optomization, who does the blame for that lie with, the programmer. Hell, this game won't even take advantage of dual processors, even quake III will do that. With a properly optomized subsytem, this game on a G5 would smoke the version on a PC, bottom line. We'll just have to see what the open-source community can do, because sadly, developers are not willing to put their best foot forward. They release sub-par products with "satisfactory" performance. Most games run great for me, I am one of the fortunate to have a 2.5x2. With the right coding, even the iMac would make a respectable gaming machine. When it comes down to it, console gamers outnumber PC gamers by a factor of 10. Mac users don't buy games near as much as PC users b/c mac users are interested in getting real work done more that the average PC user. Lastly, look at any application designed to do real work, and you will see a big performance difference favoring the mac. i.e. photoshop, after effecs, maya, etc.

[tdewey]

Originally Posted by Dont Hurt Me

True but who's fault is that? i mean look Apple doesnt offer any video upgrades for anything but powermac but at the same time tells us how great its products are with the fx5200. It forces you to buy the latest OS just to get half decent drivers to play. The blame for Doom3s poor Mac performance starts with Apple and no one else. Come on Steve/Apple i would love to hear your spin on why? sure fx5200 is under 20 bucks each is that why? i think we know that is the real answer. Im glad it made to Mac ( thanks Aspyr) im not glad about Apples use of what i term garbage video. Its in almost every product they make and with billions in the bank there just isnt any excuse for milking your user base as they have. rant over on this one.

Exactly. The thing holding Mac games back is the GPU. The gap between the PB and iBook and their Dell equivalents is ridiculous.

[iJaz]

Nice! For those who have power enough to run it... I.e. not me!

[Mord]

must control urge to run it on my ibook for a laugh, must stop self clicking on MTKA

[puckhead193]

awsome, now i need is for someone with my specs to buy it and let me know how it runs

[kalashnicov]

yeah ... MTKA ...

I'm gonna buy this one

[iriejedi]

Originally Posted by B-52 Macer

Nice! For those who have power enough to run it... I.e. not me!

I honestly think it will run well, better than we have bummed our selves out to believe...BUT it does create the digital divide between the haves and the have nots....

I'm betting I'll play the XBOX version more, but I really wanted something that in theory will stress the system I saved up for over a period of 2+ years.

I got the power - time to wield it.... but if I had anything less.... I'd fork out the $199 for a brand new xbox and the game!

[Nermal]

So, we have the game with possibly the highest system requirements ever, so where's the demo so that we can see how well it runs?

[seamuskrat]

Doom 3 Benchmark study.
Please note, these resukts are not meant to be a scientific standard, but more of an approach for the average hobbyist and playing the game. All tests were run 3 times and scores are an average. All tests were done using timedemo using demo1.

Dual 2.0 G5, 512 RAM, nVidia FX 5200.
Low Quality 800x600 = 37.9 FPS
High Quality 800 x 600 = 21.29 FPS

Dual G5, 1.5 gigs of RAM, nVidia FX 5200
Low Quality 640 x 480 = 40.4
Low Quality 800 x 600 = 37.5
Low Quality 1024 x 768 = 22.9
High Quality 640 x 480 = 26.2
High Quality 800 x 600 = 19.6
High Quality 1024 x 7687 = 13.6

Dual 2.0 G5, 1.5 RAM Radeon 9800 Pro Special edition
UltraQuality, 8X Antialias 1024 x 768 = 20.6 FPS
Ultra Qualitu NO AA, 1024 x 768 = 29.9 FPS
High Quality 1024 x 768, NO AA = 36.8 FPS

iMac G5 512 RAM
Low Quality 800 x 600 = 29.9

Dual 1.25 G4 overclocked to 1.42 nVidia GeForce Ti, 2 gigs RAM
Low 800 x 600 = 28.5
High 800 x 600 = 20.6
Low 1024 x 768 = 18.2
High 1024 x 768 = 14.2

Overall, its playable at lower screen resolution with older Macs. The game play is smooth in many cases. Any MDD or newer G4 should be able to choke it down.

EDIT:
10.3.8 fully up to date was used on all Macs tested.

[oingoboingo]

Originally Posted by seamuskrat

Dual 2.0 G5, 512 RAM, nVidia FX 5200.
Low Quality 800x600 = 37.9 FPS
High Quality 800 x 600 = 21.29 FPS

Dual G5, 1.5 gigs of RAM, nVidia FX 5200
Low Quality 800 x 600 = 37.5
High Quality 800 x 600 = 19.6
<snip>

Thanks for these benchmarks. One useful thing that these benchmarks show is that game performance is not really improved by increasing RAM from 512MB to 1.5GB (assuming that the dual G5 system you used with 1.5GB RAM was the same 2GHz system as the one you used with 512MB).

"Add more RAM!" seems to be a bit of a knee-jerk response to many queries from people seeking to improve performance of various applications, and there is sometimes little (or no) evidence provided as to why adding more RAM might help.

From these early results of yours, at least we can say that in your test enviroment, a relatively modest amount of RAM (512MB) is sufficient to not be the limiting factor.

[Dokter_Mac]

Originally Posted by seamuskrat

Doom 3 Benchmark study.
Please note, these resukts are not meant to be a scientific standard, but more of an approach for the average hobbyist and playing the game. All tests were run 3 times and scores are an average. All tests were done using timedemo using demo1.

Dual 2.0 G5, 512 RAM, nVidia FX 5200.
Low Quality 800x600 = 37.9 FPS
High Quality 800 x 600 = 21.29 FPS

Dual G5, 1.5 gigs of RAM, nVidia FX 5200
Low Quality 640 x 480 = 40.4
Low Quality 800 x 600 = 37.5
Low Quality 1024 x 768 = 22.9
High Quality 640 x 480 = 26.2
High Quality 800 x 600 = 19.6
High Quality 1024 x 7687 = 13.6

Dual 2.0 G5, 1.5 RAM Radeon 9800 Pro Special edition
UltraQuality, 8X Antialias 1024 x 768 = 20.6 FPS
Ultra Qualitu NO AA, 1024 x 768 = 29.9 FPS
High Quality 1024 x 768, NO AA = 36.8 FPS

iMac G5 512 RAM
Low Quality 800 x 600 = 29.9

Dual 1.25 G4 overclocked to 1.42 nVidia GeForce Ti, 2 gigs RAM
Low 800 x 600 = 28.5
High 800 x 600 = 20.6
Low 1024 x 768 = 18.2
High 1024 x 768 = 14.2

Overall, its playable at lower screen resolution with older Macs. The game play is smooth in many cases. Any MDD or newer G4 should be able to choke it down.

EDIT:
10.3.8 fully up to date was used on all Macs tested.

I think i 'll buy the game.But i want to try it first in a demo.
This is the first benchmark i see on a MDD I have an overclocked MDD running at 1,5 Ghz with 2GigaBytes RAM and a GeForce4 Ti 4600.
I see a lot of reviews with FX 5200 cards and i read a lot of negative stuff about that card (low end ,only 64MB VRAM etc.) . These are the supported cards for the game :
ATI® RadeonTM 8500
ATI® RadeonTM 9000
ATI® RadeonTM 9200
ATI® RadeonTM 9500
ATI® RadeonTM 9600
ATI® RadeonTM 9700
ATI® RadeonTM 9800
All nVidia® GeForceTM 3/Ti series
All nVidia® GeForceTM 4MX series
All nVidia® GeForceTM 4/Ti series (128MB VRAM)
All nVidia® GeForceTM FX series
nVidia® GeForceTM 6800

If you look at the console-commands from Doom3 , you can tune the game for your Mac-system.You can adjust a lot of things that will help run the game smoothly with no pauses or framedrops , even on a 1,5 G4 system.
There are parameters for cache , which is usefull if you have a lot of RAM.
There are parameters for your graphics-card which you can adjust and a lot more.
I think we have to waite untill the game is a few months out and a lot of Mac-users have tested it , and tuned it!!!
Hell, there will be for sure updates in the future which will improve the framerates!
Just look at the linux reviews of the game and you will found out that there is a lot of tuning you can do without much loss of quality in graphics!
Take a look at http://www.linuxhardware.org/article...46&mode=thread and http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/...p?articleid=54

I am happy the game is not only for G5-owners and that G4-PowerMacs will be able to run the game , eventual , with a bit of tuning and with good framerates.
Yeah maybe with not all the special effects , but still with nice graphics and framerates. Maybe we (G4-owners) even can kick some PC-ass in multiplayer.
I have a dream , Graem Divine optimise that game for the Mac !!! Maybe in the future , he will share his expertise for a good port of Doom3...
Like he did with the Quake3-engine ...

"An Apple a day , keeps Windows away"
P.S.: Sorry for my poor english , i speek only dutch and french

[raggedjimmi]

this will not run on my Powerbook. ho hum, still got the PC version but without a graphics card to run it (well i have one but it dosnt like TFT).

tis a good game IMO, anyone who can run it will either love it or hate it. i love it because its old-skool but actually scary (NO game has ever made me jump before, cept this baby).

[eXan]

I will not buy this game, because it's AWFUL! And only High-end G5 owners will be able to play it!

[Italiano]

I'm a contractor (remodeling) and work with "the general public" everyday - I love to come home and do "a little killing" on my Mac... I wanna try it out. My G4 with an upgraded 1.2 ghz. chip and Radeon 9800 may not be fast enough but I still wanna try this sucker out!

[Panther]

meh...

I have a ninja PC (in addition to my trusty G4 PowerMac!) and played Doom 3 on there for about a week. While I'm sure the Mac version does it justice, the problem is that after you've initially picked your jaw off the floor, it quickly gets dull... Its very samey and you have to be pretty determined to even want to get all the way through it.

Still, mainstream games coming to the Mac can only be a good thing

[virividox]

wow its about time!!!

[CaptainCaveMann]

Well, its about time is right! I cant wait to see it run on a pm g5 and here some reviews!