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XYZ - 18 Oct 2004 05:22 GMT

I just installed Doom 3 and found it to be a bit choppy. I knew that I was
at the bottom of the requirements scale and was planning to upgrade.

Current System:
AMD Athlon 1600+
Radeon 9600xt 128 mb
512mb PC2100 DDR

I can go up to an AMD Athlon 2600+ 266fsb Tbred on my current motherboard.
Is it worth the 80 or 90 bucks or do I need to think about spending a bit
more?
Is an AMD 2600 truely comparable to a Pentium 2.6?
Thanks

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JK - 18 Oct 2004 05:54 GMT

For Doom 3, an Athlon 64 would be the best choice. A $150 Athlon 64
socket 754 beats an $815 Pentium 4 3.2 ghz EE at Doom 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

An Athlon XP is not such a good choice for Doom 3, but neither is a Pentium 4.
It also seems like Doom 3 is better suited for Nvidia graphics, especially
the very high end cards. For those into gaming in general, an Athlon 64 would
be a great choice.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=8

Of course an upgrade to an Athlon 64 would mean not just a new cpu,
but also a new motherboard, new ram(PC3200 ddr ram), and perhaps
also maybe a new power supply? It isn't just your cpu that is holding back
performance in Doom 3, but also the relatively slow ram, and
a video card that is not one of the very high end Nvidia based cards
Doom might be the game that is most demanding in terms of both cpu
power and video card power to play well.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=1

> I just installed Doom 3 and found it to be a bit choppy. I knew that I was
> at the bottom of the requirements scale and was planning to upgrade.
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> Is an AMD 2600 truely comparable to a Pentium 2.6?
> Thanks

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ArWeGod - 18 Oct 2004 08:23 GMT

[top posting corrected]

> > I just installed Doom 3 and found it to be a bit choppy. I knew that I was
> > at the bottom of the requirements scale and was planning to upgrade.
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
> An Athlon XP is not such a good choice for Doom 3, but neither is a Pentium 4.

[snip]

> Of course an upgrade to an Athlon 64 would mean not just a new cpu,
> but also a new motherboard, new ram(PC3200 ddr ram), and perhaps
> also maybe a new power supply? It isn't just your cpu that is holding back

I have an AMD 2000+ with 512 RAM and a GeForce 440 AGPx4 with 128 MB. I
had a friend come over and bring his 258 GeForce 5400 (or 5200 or
something) PCI card over and my frame rates went from 11-14FPS to
60-80FPS. It was f.cking cool for the 2 hours I had it in my machine,
and convinced me that the video card is king in Doom 3. The change was
amazing.

I mean, I had AGPx4 and this was a PCI card. My buddy had a faster CPU,
1GB RAM to my 512, ...but I'm running a "lean" Win2Kpro and he has the
mistake called XP w/ SP2 (the death of privacy - and hopefully MS). We
had similar FPS, but mine jumped to the stratosphere with a $100 card. I
might have to miss a meal or two, or cut down a Friday night
"entertainment" for that kind of upgrade~!

Signature

ArWeJerky

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JK - 24 Oct 2004 00:54 GMT

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. To play Doom 3 very well,
one needs a fast cpu(Athlon 64 is by far the best)

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

a fast video card, and plenty of fast ram.

> [top posting corrected]
> >
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
> --
> ArWeJerky

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Blaedmon - 18 Oct 2004 08:25 GMT

If youre wanting performance vs $$$, the only weak point in your system is
the gfx card. Going from 1600+ to 2600+ would be a good step, but just
remember the gfx card is the first point of lag on your system.

>I just installed Doom 3 and found it to be a bit choppy. I knew that I was
> at the bottom of the requirements scale and was planning to upgrade.
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> Is an AMD 2600 truely comparable to a Pentium 2.6?
> Thanks

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vox - 28 Nov 2004 00:12 GMT

*PCI-Express*

>I just installed Doom 3 and found it to be a bit choppy. I knew that I was
> at the bottom of the requirements scale and was planning to upgrade.
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> Is an AMD 2600 truely comparable to a Pentium 2.6?
> Thanks

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