Doom 3 for mac

jonmichael23

jonmichael23

Registered
Doom 3 will be released in a few months after such a long wait. I've seen a couple other threads about it and thought I'd clear some things up. It is definately being coded on a pc and a mac, and this might be the best mac game in terms of coding and performance on the mac in contrast to the pc version. It isn't just a dumb port, John Carmack likes macs very much. The first screens of it were shown at macworld 2001 - http://www.3ddownloads.com/?file_id=138158#

Also, in the doom 3 the legacy (http://www.3dgamers.com/games/doom3/) movie from electronic expo 2002, when the movies at 2:05 u will see the game being played on a screen, it zooms out and you see that its on a apple studio display and most likely a powermac G4, again from 2002......and the games at full resolution on it, and looks great.

Tim Willits and Todd Hollenshead, in an interview with gamepro(http://www.gamepro.com/computer/pc/games/features/31282.shtml), said that the processor speed required on the pc will probably be at 1 ghz (p4 im sure, doesnt say though) and they go on to say that it will be what graphics card you have that will effect how it plays.This is a quote from the article made by Todd Hollenshead about the graphics card situation, "a GeForce 2 class of card should be a full-impact experience at a reasonable frame rate". This article is from October 3rd, 2003. And this was before panther, I am sure Carmack has been optimizing it now for panther, and with 10.3.3's supposedly better opengl graphics, I'm thinking my 1 Ghz iMac with nvidia geforce 4 mx_64 mb vram, will play this game at a reasonable frame rate consistently.

I do know this game will/should play a whole lot better then unreal tournament 2003 and the 2004 demo do, also halo. I'm guessing if the pc base is 1 Ghz, for macs it will probably be either 600 or 700 mhz G4, and I also think the one bad thing for mac will be that you will need *at least* 64 mb of video ram, seeing as carmack has said the only bad thing about the xbox version is the 64 mb vram versus the 256 u can have on a pc. Anyone know why apple is so behind regarding graphics card video ram? I dont think you can even get anything more then 128, and the only 128 ones i know of are a ati radeon 9800 pro(G5) or nvidia geforce 4 titanium (powermac G4). Maybe this is why pc gaming is typically better, besides the fact a lot of mac games are just ports and not optimized? I don't even think its possible to upgrade the iMac's card. I've seen the ati 9800 pro w/128 to buy for mac on sites and mags, but I think theyre only for powermacs? Anyway, my point in all this is that Doom 3 should be one of the first really good games for the mac. The pc versions set to come out may/early june, with the mac and xbox versions not far behind (late june/july). I can't wait :)
 
I am asking myself all the time, what are the differences between pc graphic cards and those for mac. They use the same agp port, they use the same architecture, they use the same memory... So, what is it, that doesn't allow me to buy a 9800XT with 256mb? Drivers? I thought the drivers support a bunch of gpus starting from 9000-9800 or all Geforce cards starting from Geforce1-5950. Did anyone ever just plug a pc gpu into his powermac and try this? Maybe this is just a rumor.. ;)
 
OK, I'm going to be a kill joy and point out some errornous assumptions. The assumption that a 1Ghz PC processor is equal to a 600 - 700 Mhz is something that I've never understood. There are many PC processors on the market, all of them with different performance characteristics. There's the VIA (Nehemiah, Centaur, etc) line of processors, AMD (Athlon family), Intel (P3, P4, Centrino) and Transmeta. All of these perform differently, and I'm guessing when he says 1 Ghz processor, he isn't referring to the P4, because the P4 starts at 1.5 Ghz.

He's probably referring to either a P3 or an Athlon. Now unless Doom 3 is heavily optimized for the G4/G5 line of processors and makes use of altivec, there is no way a 600 - 700 Mhz G4 is going to compete with a 1 Ghz Athlon or P3.

The XBox doesn't have 64 MB video RAM. It has 64 MB RAM in total(!) http://www.xboxcentral.net/hardware.html?view=hardware&vo=1 . It uses a shared memory, thus the video, sound and application use the same memory. So hopefully, that'll give a ray of light to my GF4 32 MB :)

I apologize if this is going to sound very harsh, but a lot of what you're saying is just conjecture, and it seems more like marketing speak, that lacks any solid grounding. I know I bought into it when I decided to buy my Powerbook. I was terribly disappointed with its gaming performance, and I'm rather wary of building up my expectations for something that's not yet released.
 
Zammy-Sam said:
I am asking myself all the time, what are the differences between pc graphic cards and those for mac. They use the same agp port, they use the same architecture, they use the same memory... So, what is it, that doesn't allow me to buy a 9800XT with 256mb? Drivers? I thought the drivers support a bunch of gpus starting from 9000-9800 or all Geforce cards starting from Geforce1-5950. Did anyone ever just plug a pc gpu into his powermac and try this? Maybe this is just a rumor.. ;)
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Shame that companys such as ATI are very against this, its just simple PIRACY to them as they have taken them all the time to make the software for them. Thats why flashing your PC card to work on your mac is a BIG no no, and I am not going to go into it anymore as its just wrong. And shouldnt realy be in the thread, however much i understand what you are saying. Games on the mac are still pants compared to the pc i know. On my g5 raimbow 6 RS is still more choppy then it would be on a 800mhz pc. But thats the way ife is.
 
I want to get Doom 3 badly, but I know my Mac is certainly not a gaming system. My old PC which was a 2200+ XP AMD Processor, 512mb of DDR Ram, GeForce 3 64mb card and lots of other nice features ran the Doom 3 Alpha at like....16fps in a non-combat environment. Combat came....like 9fps or maybe 6fps...whatever. Point is, yeah it was an Alpha, but Doom 3 will be very beefy on the requirements and Im afraid our Macs wont be up to par.
 
Here are a couple of interesting links dealing with video cards and video ram.

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030604/index.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030930/radeon_9800-32.html

From the test they have performed here, there is almost no difference between an ATI 9800 pro with 128 mb and one with 256 mb. This may be one of the reasons that you don't see a mac version with 256 mb.

Would it be nice? Yes, but probably only for bragging rights. Unless Doom 3 is the first game that would actually take advantage of a card with 256 mb of ram on it, I personally don't see the point in spending the extra money for a video card just to have more memory.

According to the tests run, even the 9800 XT is only about 5 - 10 % faster than the 9800 pro, so is that increase enough for you to justify a $499.00 (XT 256 mb) vs $299 (pro 128 mb) price tag?

Again, at this point in time, not to me it wouldn't. Most of the articles I've read state that games are more processor bound than video card bound when it comes to performance. A video card can only process the data that is fed to it, and if your computer can't pass it enough data, then it won't perform to its fullest.

I am looking forward to Doom 3 and I hope that my machine will be capable of playing it smoothly.
 
viro, sorry I thought it was 64 mb vram that they meant, so the xbox only has 64 mb ram total?! I don't know about for pc, but halo looks like crap compared to the xbox version on my computer. Then again, pcs are a lot better at games then macs so maybe it does look better on a pc. Anyway, im sorry if you thought my information sounded like i was "marketing". I know that doom 3 isnt even out and anything ive heard or read could not be true, but i do know that john carmack will try his best to make this a good game for the mac.

Also for the G4 to P4 comparison, i remember at the 2002 convention they compared a powermac( which couldnt have been more then 600 mhz at the time) to a 1.7 ghz pentium machine and the mac beat it in three tests, kind of like what they did at the 2003 wwdc with the g5 to the xeon. If it beat a 1.7 pentium 4 and the base is a 1 ghz p3 or amd, then shouldnt the mac be able to play games as good? And for the graphics, maybe a 128 is close or the same in performance to a 256, but my real troubles are that i dont think that you can upgrade the cards in an imac, nor the emac ibook or powerbook, just the powermacs. I dont really know anything about mac graphics cards though since I've never seen or read much about them.

If anyone knows anything, like if you can put a new graphics card in an iMac, please let me know :)
 
From what i've read about doom III, more video ram will result in less loading, and unloading. Because you won't need to swaps textures, models, maps to keep them in video memory. There has been no word what the maxim amount of video memory will be support, that is if there is a limit. But if your using an older computer I would be concerned about bus speed. More video memory theoretically should reduce bus activity.
Another way to improve performance would be a sound card. But it would have to be support by the os, and doom III. Some sound cards can slow down performance. Witch make it important to carefully select a sound card.
 
jonmichael23 said:
Also for the G4 to P4 comparison, i remember at the 2002 convention they compared a powermac( which couldnt have been more then 600 mhz at the time) to a 1.7 ghz pentium machine and the mac beat it in three tests, kind of like what they did at the 2003 wwdc with the g5 to the xeon. If it beat a 1.7 pentium 4 and the base is a 1 ghz p3 or amd, then shouldnt the mac be able to play games as good? And for the graphics, maybe a 128 is close or the same in performance to a 256, but my real troubles are that i dont think that you can upgrade the cards in an imac, nor the emac ibook or powerbook, just the powermacs. I dont really know anything about mac graphics cards though since I've never seen or read much about them.
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And what tests were those? No computer company in the world, certainly not one led by Steve Jobs is going to demonstrate a product that performs inferior to the competition :) IIRC, those tests were some selected Photoshop filters, which isn't really representative of general computer users. A Xeon is a server CPU, not a desktop CPU. As such, its more rigorously tested and doesn't use the cutting edge technology taht hasn't proven itself yet. So you get a slower FSB, lower clock rate, and slower RAM which just kills the performance. Try comparing a G5 to an Athlon 64, and you'll get a very very different picture.

The G4(& G5) can and does spank the competition when if comes to apps that can use Altivec, like certain scientific apps (BLAS), media encoding, encryption, and digital signal processing. In such apps that use Altivec, my humble Powerbook spanks a P4 that's clocked more than twice as fast. However, games fall into none of those categories. Using Altivec in games isn't easy, and is sometime close to impossible. I've already posted references to Altivec documentation and why it isn't easy to use Altivec in other threads, and I won't do so again here.

Buying a 256 MB video card now isn't really worth it. By the time games use 256 MB, you'll probably need a new card anyway. That's just IMHO, by the way and no, I can't back that up with anything :p.
 
This is just conjecture too, but I'll be willing to bet that most Mac games are not optimized for the G5. There are certain common programming practices that can really slow down a G5. As games are created with the G5 in mind, they'll get better.

Check out http://developer.apple.com/performance/g5optimization.html

Of course, the Mac will probably not even then be a match for PCs at gaming. I think most Mac users recognize the advantages of the machines over Windows machines.

Doug
 
I just noticed that the preorder sites have posted release dates. EB says 6/15 and Gamestop says 7/1. So much for the speculated April 1st date.


In either case, I have a dual G5 with a radeon 9800. I really hope it will play D3 on the highest settings. I've never owned a computer before that could play current games in high quality graphics mode.
 
I've never owned a computer that could play current games at the max setting too. Doing so would have cost me an arm, a leg, and probably something else :)

So I got a console to do my gaming. Only thing I miss is strategy games like Warcraft, Starcraft and C&C that aren't available on consoles.
 
Viro said:
I've never owned a computer that could play current games at the max setting too. Doing so would have cost me an arm, a leg, and probably something else :)
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this is why i am a fan of what i call 'classic gaming' i like to wait till a game is a year old or so and the price has gone down considerably that way i know the game will prob work on the system i am running and i wont have to pay 50 dollars or whatever for a game i am only going to play for a few weeks :D
 
I have the latest leak of doom 3. It runs like CRAP on my PC running an Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53 Ghz) 9800pro and 512. Hopefully this is just poor performance because of the leaked beta. I really want it to play well on my computer. It looks really cool, the enviroment is freaking scary, I cant wait to see what the real game is like.
 
I really have to agree with Carmack (Or was it Hollenstead?). You really can't judge this game on the leaked alpha. It just ain't fair on it. Wait for a demo or the real deal before you start moaning that you can't get it to play any higher than 9fps.
 
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