Nah, though the trend is for Doom to fit someone’s budget rather than someone’s budget fitting Doom.
While some wouldn’t upgrade at all, the general response was more along the lines of “I’ll do a new video card” but not more than that.
Even that was an interesting response, because the real answer was “I’ll do a new video card to handle the Doom III-generation of games.” Some will do that right away, others will wait six months.
Some were more than happy to buy a new system, but those who did invariably had older systems.
Those who had AthlonXP systems or better were very resistant to the notion of upgrading anything but the video card (and memory, if needed). You’ll turn down the settings, and if you have to turn them down too much, the game will have to wait until you’re good and damn well ready to buy the hardware.
But enough of my summarizing, let’s see what some of you had to say . . . .
Just A Vid for Id
Anything more than a new video card and maybe a little RAM is too much, so let’s say $200 to $250US. Like most
visitors to Overclockers.com, I keep my system fairly up to date. So anything more than that is just silly.
Not more than $200, tops.
I try to keep my machine up to standards, but I realize that sometimes a
trendsetting new software will force me to to upgrade my system faster than
planned. And $200 is just about the limit. But these are cumulative. So if,
for some reason I would have to upgrade my graphics-card, and that would
give me the ability to play both Doom and some other “must buy” games it
would probably make me spring for the new GeForce FX…..
I’d probably pay $250 max to play Doom 3 when it debuts. I’d get the
best videocard available for that amount or less. If enough money was
left over I might consider getting a memory upgrade, but that’s where
the buck stops.
Personally, if I can’t play just by upgrading the video card, I won’t play.
Even then, I doubt I would get the latest/greatest card.
I think this game will mark the start point of next
generation games. I assume that this game will likely
be followed by others requiring similar power (some
using that same Doom III engine). The dollar point
then jumps up to $350. If that isn’t sufficient, then
I would wait until it is, or until additional reasons
push up the dollar point.
$150-200 invariably for a video card. I figure if THIS game needs me
to get an upgrade, it’s just a matter of time before there are more and more
games out there that will do the same. So I make a purchase not just for
this game, but for the one’s that I expect will show up on the scene as
well.
I will buy this game expecting a vidcard upgrade only. I would not balk at
this, seeing that new games using id’s technology will soon follow,
justifying the upgrade.
I don’t look at it as upgrading “for just one game.” I look at it as
setting myself up for the next wave of games with this one being only the
first of what will be many that I will play using this engine.
More Than A Vid for Id
I’ve been putting off upgrading until doom3 comes out so I can spend my upgrade dollars wisely.
1) I will probably buy a new video card and a new motherboard. Maybe a new cpu. That’s $300-$400.
2) I do expect to upgrade when I buy a demanding game. In this case, Doom3 will act as a benchmark. I know
that if my system can run Doom3 good, it’s going to run anything else I buy for the next year good.
I have already made some upgrades.
I replaced my XP 1,53@1,6Ghz whit a 2400+ [email protected] and next up will
most likely be a GeForce FX because I run Linux, therefore the Radeon 9700 is no
option.
I would still get me a GeForce FX even if DOOM 3 didn’t existed but the
reason I am getting a high end card are all the new games like UT 2003
and so one.
I am also sitting on a GeForce 3 now and I have seen with my own eyes
that a GeForce 3/4 is not enough for DOOM 3 and i think most new games
later on will use the DOOM 3 engine so a fast card is necessary.
In Sweden, computer stuff is a bit more expensive, but I am ready to pay $600 for the fastest card on the market.
That would be $500 in the USA, I think.
The problem with your question is that a person doesn’t simply upgrade to play one game. I’m not going out to
buy a “Radeon 9700 Doom 3 Edition” that only plays Doom 3 well. If I upgrade when Doom 3 comes out I also have
the expectation that any other cool game out at that time will run very well as well as games that come out up
to about a year later. These all may not be games I could have played reasonably with my current hardware.
My cutoff will be $850, but only because I am due for an upgrade anyway. I am willing to spend an extra $400
on this upgrade to insure DoomIII will run with all the eye-candy turned on. Normally I expect to have to do a
vid card upgrade to play the latest game at its fullest visual potential. This time I think I will need a
complete upgrade including video, MB, mem, and cpu. I am currently running a Tualatin 1.1 @ 1.466. I think I
will come up short for processing if I don’t upgrade it all (currently GF3).
I’m always looking for an excuse to upgrade. Red Shift helped me upgrade
from a 386-40 to a Pentium 90. That was great. I think conscience and
fiscal responsibility keep a lot of upgrades from happening. When a game
comes along that the machine cannot handle the time is right for a
substantual upgrade. Maybe three to four hundred dollars for me.
Doing It For Your Own Id
As for my dollar amount to get my computer up to “uber l33t” status so I can play games (and impress my friends) ,
I’d pay up to about $500.
If they don’t want to upgrade for DoomIII due to cost, then fine, stick to older games and when they visit a
friend with the new setup, their upgrade is sure to follow. I had to upgrade to Office 2k as my associates
were using Office 2k and implementing features in documents that required Office 2k to collaborate back and
forth. If you want to frag online with your buddies which chose to upgrade, you have to follow suit!
When DOOM III comes out I would be able to justify buying a new graphics
card, and maybe some more RAM. All things said I would be willing to
spend a few hundred bucks tops, and would only spend this much because I
secretly want to upgrade anyway, and it would be a convenient excuse.
I would never buy the game first and then have to upgrade, because
owning the game that I so eagerly anticipated and not being able to play
it would be unbearable. The only exception to this rule would be if my
significant other refused to spend the money on an upgrade that I wanted
to make.
Under these circumstances I would buy the game, load it, show
her how crappy it looks, and then insist that since I already paid the
$50 or so for the game, and can’t take it back, that I would just have
to upgrade. That doesn’t always go over really well, but it goes over
much better than buying all the stuff when she isn’t watching and hoping
that she doesn’t notice.
On Sk-id Row (not really, but it has “id” in it :))
I’m only 18 years old. I’m a poor college student (though now on Christmas break) I work as much as I can,
which usually amounts to 11 hours a week, as my grades are more important. At $8 an hour, I get a bi-weekly
paycheck of about of about $150 (after taxes, FICA, my weekly United Way donation, etc.) I owe my parents $40
per paycheck to pay them back for a $700 telescope I just bought. Now I’m down to $110. Gas and living expenses
for the two weeks until the next paycheck is $60. Now I’m down to $50. I put $20 in an envelope in my dresser
draw (please don’t come rob me.) I deposit $30 every two weeks, or $15 a week in the bank.
It is true my envelope grows almost as fast as the bank, but my envelope has this written on the outside “Doom
3” and a smiley face next to it. There is $740 in that envelope. I’m going to buy Doom 3 and a new Video card.
I have a GeForce 2 w/64 Mb of RAM on it. I’m running an XP1700 at an average of 1.8 GHz. Hopefully I won’t have
to upgrade. I have 640 MB of DDR system ram. I want to buy a better monitor, but that might have to wait to see
what’s left in my envelope after I week of Dooming. I have a 15” LCD that’s not very well suited for gaming. I
may put it up on eBay and invest in something better. So I will spend about $800 or so making my computer Doom
3 compatible, including, but not limited to: a new graphics card, the game itself, a new mouse, maybe a new
CPU, maybe a new monitor.
Well, I thought I’d give you my thoughts on upgrading for DoomIII. First off, let me sort of explain my
financial situation. I’m a college student and have a hard time paying off the expenses of daily life the way
it is. I built a computer early fall last year, mostly from money that I got for graduating high school. The
system specs are listed below.
AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz (AYHJA core)
IWILL KA266 rev 1.3
512MB DDR
WD 7200rpm 40gb hard drive
Pure GF3 (Asus V8200)
It’s not a bad setup for its age, but I am beginning to see some slowdowns in certain games when I use max
settings. Now to answer your questions, the max that I’d pay for upgrades to play DoomIII would probably be
about $300US if I found the money. This game will probably be used as an excuse to upgrade, but I would buy it
hoping it would run fairly well without upgrading. If it does run O.K. without an upgrade, I won’t upgrade.
It does bother me that I might have to upgrade a system that is only about a year and a half old to play a
game, but that seems to be the way technology is going. I think eventually we are going to hit a wall, so to
speak, but probably not for a while.
I’ve found that my meager GF2 GTS can run any game I want to play. I may
have to drop the resolution, or turn off some details, but I can still play
the game and enjoy it. I will not upgrade my PC to play a game unless A)
it’s generally in need of upgrading anyway and B) my slow PC interferes with
how much I enjoy the game. Usually, A&B happen at the same time.
I recently ran into a similar situation with Age of Mythology. I went out and spent $53 on the game, and
when I installed it, it said there was a problem with my audio hardware and the only way I could play it was
without sound. This is the first time I’ve run into a problem like that, my sound card is a Hercules
Fortissimo II, and this is the first game that’s ever given me any problems. It plays Unreal
Tournament 2003 flawlessly, and any other game or demo I’ve ever tried to run on my system.
I know Newegg has
Soundblaster 5.1’s on sale for $35, but that makes it a $90 dollar game. I almost bought the new sound card, but
I asked myself if I would have bought the game if it cost $90 at the store. The answer was no way, so I took
the game back and kept my Fortissimo II.
Is Id K-id-ding?
I don’t really expect much from Doom3. Nobody talks about the story or
gameplay, just the graphics- that’s not a good sign! I’m expecting to beat
it in a weekend and forget about it, like so many other games. Hopefully,
I’m wrong.
I want to voice my opinion on this matter! I HAVE the DOOM 3 Alpha Demo that leaked out onto the WWW. Here is my config:
WinXP Pro
AMD 2800+ 333FSB
GeForce4 ti4400 with 128MB DDR 3.3ns
80G WD HDD 8mb Cache
Abit KD-7 Raid
512MB 3500 (433mhz) DDR
And to be honest, I had a really hard time playing the demo until I downloaded some of the performance tweaks and
fixes out there that enable you to play this demo (still jumpy and slow). Sometimes my FPS were around 8FPS!
Will I upgrade? I don’t know if I can! Well, what I mean is what would I buy? I already have the 2-3 fastest
video card, the Best/Fast DDR, an Excellent MotherBoard my HDD is fast also! So what would I UPGRADE TO? I’m
not asking for help, I’m stating a point other readers might want to think about!
If you’re running a P3 and a GeForce3 card, upgradeing to the max (P4/AMD, GeForce4, DDR, etc..) is
STILL not going to make this game run well! I have spoken to people that have a Radeon card and
P4 3G System and they all say the same (still jumpy, slow and the FPS SUCK)! So do you Upgrade? NO NO NO!!!
What bothers me is when you buy a game that has requirements stating something to the jist of:
Minimum Requirements
PIII 500Mhz
64MB RAM
3D vid card w/16MB vid memory supporting DX 7.0
Recommended requirements (isn’t that an oxymoron? recommended/required?)
PIII 800Mhz
256MB RAM
GeForce 3 64MB
Now, that’s no EXACT quote from a PC game box, but its damn close. Notice the major difference there?
When I read a game to see if it will run well on my system, I look at the Recommended Requirements and I add
about 10-20%, i.e. if it says PIII 800Mhz, I assume 1.0Ghz will do me well…if it says 256MB of RAM, I usually
assume that it probably adequate, but that I might want 512 or so, and when it says GF3 64MB, I usually assume
that a higher-end card like a Ti200 or Ti4200/4400 will work well. Its sad really, that a lot of software
companies pick on the Joe Shmoe with the Dell he just bought, and knows nothing about except the numbers….he
reads the box and goes “Oh, my PC has that, and it says GeForce card needed, I have a GeForce MX, I’ll be
okay….oh, and it says 64MB RAM recommended…I think I bought 128 I’ll be okay….”
Imagine being this guy and getting so excited about your new game, getting home and installing it (I’m giving Joe a lot of mental
credit here …) …and seeing about 10FPS cuz the game WILL run on those requirements, just not well…ouch.
That said, what this means to me is: If your minimum requirements are a far stretch from your recommended
requirements, then they’re trying to sell the game even to people who don’t realize the minimum is gonna get
them about 2 FPS and it won’t be fun. If Doom 3 comes out and the minimum required vid card is somewhere
around anything like a GF4 64MB and the recommended is 128, and the system memory recommended is 512, I’ll
still upgrade soon there after IF AND WHEN I see another game with similar requirements. Will I still play?
Yeah, IF THE DEMO RUNS GOOD :)…..but why upgrade for one game, if the majority of the other new titles that
come out are still completely playable on your current system? I don’t know, and I won’t. Especially
considering the major hardware changes coming in 2003?
To be honest I find that software (recommended and minimum) system
requirements are a load of crap. With only one exception to date, I have
had no problem getting software running on systems well below the specified
requirements.
If you ask me, software vendors artificially inflate their minimum
specifications. Probably they just do not want to field tech support calls
from people with marginal hardware. Which is fine by me, anything that
keeps business overhead down has to make a difference in what I pay for
games when I buy them.
Sure this helps to drive hardware sales but anyone who drops a few hundred
buck just because the box for a game says they have to is, in my book, a
sheep headed to the big corporate slaughter.
And Carmack made Doom III, and Saw That id Was Good
You seem to have something against what the Doom III requirements
will be or are surprised of it. This is nothing new coming from id software.
Every time that John Carmack does a technology shift it beats the hell out
of current hardware and usually takes the very latest to run decent with all
the bells and whistles and usually one more generation after that to run
well. Of course it will be customizable and will run on lower end systems
just fine but not at the fidelity of what you would expect a next generation
game to have.
The original Doom did this to 386 and low end 486 machines.
Quake did this to Pentiums, quake 3 to Pentium 3’s etc etc…. If id software
games are things you like then this is not a surprise and is in fact
expected. Carmack is not interested in selling to the lowest common
denominator. He will of course try and have it run on as many machines as
possible but only up to a point.. It has to support whatever the current
technology he is emphasizing for that particular engine.
If you are used to running current games at high resolutions (1024×768 and
higher) with antialising and trilinear or anisotropic filtering and getting
high frame rates you can forget that with Doom III. Infact I doubt with a
Pentium 4 3ghz and Radeon 9700 or Nvidia Geforce FX you will be able to do
that. You will either have to drop the resolution or give up some of the
filtering. The thing that is missed though, is if you get a rig that will
run the latest id engine well then you are set for quite a while. Quake 3
engine games lasted for almost 3 years.
I’ll be honest, I love id software games. They’re about the only games
that I play with any semblance of regularity.
I’ve noticed a certain trend. id releases a game, and a cascade of
benchmarks fly out the door. Those with “top of the line” systems will
find themselves ‘sitting pretty’ and able to play the game with little
concession to visual quality for speed. They may have to drop
resolution down a notch but all in all, the game will look and play –
good. (Not great – just – good.)
Those with middle of the road – to lower end budget systems will be left
wanting more.
I’ve been in both situations in the past and will explain what I feel is
prudent.
The biggest mistake I feel a person with a budget system could make when
D3 is released is upgrade at the time of release. Simply because even
the very best equipment at that time will be “ok.” That means someone
that’s been otherwise happy with their system will spend a significant
amount of money on components to achieve “ok” performance.
The person with a little more foresight will wait until the “top of the
line” rigs are in the middle of the road to budget pricerange before
upgrading for D3.
I remember when Quake2 was released. My Voodoo1 card which handled
Quake1 with aplomb stuttered and choked at times in Q2. The old Pentium
150 and V1 was showing its age. I went through a series of upgrades
during Q2. You could practically track technologies’ evolution by my
upgrade patterns. P2 333, Intel AGP graphics card, Voodoo2 graphics
card, TNT 1 AGP graphics card, TNT2 Ultra graphics card (which was
eventually married to a Dual Intel Celeron @522 MHz rig.) The upgrades
would follow with the advent of Quake3….
In retrospect, I was foolish with my upgrades. I know this now. Had I
been a little more wise with my purchases I could have gotten a lot more
bang for the buck.
It is a waste of money to make incremental upgrades! Rarely, if ever,
will a person notice an improvement in performance, because the effect
on gameplay is more subtle than blatant. I’ve learned from my mistakes,
and have taken to the idea that it is best skip at least one hardware
generation before making an upgrade.
An example would be going from a GeForce2 to a GeForce4. In the case of
processors, newer generations aren’t as easily identifiable. A person
with a Katmai P3 500 would have been well served to upgrade to a CuMine
P3 933 or an Athlon T-bird (when the prices came down.)
I could go on but I think you got the idea. 🙂
And finally:
id’s Fanatic Fantastic!!
As far as I’m concerned there is no limit for Doom 3, if it can
re-create even 1/10’th the fun of the original,
2000$ USD no problem at all.
Thanks to all who responded!! If we put them all up, this would have been thirty pages long!
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