Doom III out today

Defender, was, is and always will be, the best arcade game ever

Michael.

 

So what are the minimum specs needed, as I loved Doom. Don't think mine would cope though

 

Lordsummit, I'd say ideally if you want to play it without any jerking or anything, you are going to need at least 2.5 GHz (or AXP 2500+ or better) CPU, lots of memory, fairly modern graphics card.

I've just upgraded my memory to 1.25 Gb, and along with my 2600+ and |Ti4200 it runs pretty well now at 800x600 medium. When I had only 512 mb it ran a bit choppy at times. I'm gonna get myself a GF6800 as soon as I can afford it

 

The rule with hardware requirements is they always understate them to sell more titles. If it requires a 1.5Ghz CPU then its likely to much much greater than that. You should be able to upgrade your PC to an Althlon 64 or a HT P4 for around £200-£250 quid though which make mince meat of your old PIII (although the PIII was a very good processor back in its day, they were faster than the first generation P4's).

 

First person shoot-em-ups aren't really my thing. I much prefer things like Uru - Ages Beyond Myst, (which admittedly I've only played the demo of), which tax the brain a bit. Having said that, I've seen screenshots and a demo vid of DOOM III and it has to be said the graphics and feel look pretty good.

GTM

 

I've got a 933Mhz PIII, 512MB RAM and the latest ATI Radeon 9600XT gfx card and my machine plays most modern games acceptably allthough movement can get a bit jerky sometimes.

AT, you say you an upgrade to a P4 for £250? I assume you're talking about a whole new motherboard and CPU? That would be a fair bit of hassle. I wonder if Dell motherboards (mine's a Dell) are a standard fit (ie, if I got a new one, would it fit in my existing case)... Another spanner in the works is that I'd need a new PSU as the PSU connectors that Dell use are totally non-standard

If I could use my existing case, hard drives, gfx card, sound card and network card that would be a good start.

Michael.

 

I know some Dell's do have the standard ATX PSU's but I am guessing yours isn't. I know you can get conversion cables but your existing power supply probably won't be powerful enough for a P4 HT or an Althlon 64 or high end Barton.

Some older AGP cards don't work in new motherboards but you said your graphics card is recent, those have 3 cut outs for backward comptability so I am guessing its using AGP 4X at the moment which would run at 8X on a new board so you may get a tiny improvement there.

Also I wouldn't like to bet a new motherboard would fit in your Dell, I guess it depends on the size of the I/O cutout (the motherboards have I/O cut out panels supplied) and where the screw wholes are on your board.

You can get decent cases for £30 and your gtaphics card, sound card, hard drive, optical drives can be kept. Its almost certain you would need new memory though as I am guessing yours dosn't have DDR or if it does it will be the old 266Mhz stuff. If you have recently upgraded then hopefully its new 333Mhz or 400Mhz stuff that will work fine in new machines, its just the older 266Mhz stuff will try and run at 333Mhz or higher and probably cause your system to crash a lot.