Doom 3 System Requirements Revealed

The Llama King writes "The Houston Chronicle's Computing column has got the Doom 3 minimum system requirements. Biggest eye-opener: 384 MB of memory. Lots of mainstream PCs have been sold with 256 MB of RAM, so upgrades will be in order. RAM chip manufacturers should be salivating about now. You'll also need a 1.5-GHz processor and a GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500 graphics card or better."

Ooooh..

[xenostar]

Ooooh, you mean the Doom 3 interactive slide show? That sounds about right then.

Too Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it is time to upgrade this 486 I use to play Doom II.

I'll trade...

[the_mad_poster]

I'll trade my little brother for a Radeon 9800XT before Doom3 hits the shelves! PLEASE!

Does not compute, BIG jump from II to III

[ayeco]

Wait wait wait a minute, Doom II's sys reqs were:

486 processor operating at a minimum of 66MHz or any Pentium® /Athlon® processors

8 MB RAM

20 MB of uncompressed hard disk space

100MB of free hard drive space for the

Windows swap file (in addition to install space)

Seems like quite a jump for just one point.

Re:thats it?

[ScottGant]

But once again they have to cater to the lowest common denominator. There are always those people out there that have the computer they bought 15 years ago and want it to last a lifetime and then go:

"back in my day we could program everything in 640k of RAM, that's all you need and we were THANKFULL to get it! And we loved it! We didn't need more than 4 colors on our CGA displays. Why doesn't Doom 3 work on that? Guess they don't know how to program! Oh...have to go, Matlock is on..."

Dang that system will almost run Longhorn

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for my personal copy of a DRM-build operating system...

Re:Oh....I also was "surprised". *yawn*

[MarsDefenseMinister]

That's completely unreasonable, because it would require someone to buy a 256 MB module, a 128 MB Module, and a 2 MB module. What the hell were they thinking?

Such a tease!

[juggaleaux]

I'm using a Voodoo Banshee card from 1998, you insensitive clod!

I think I am going to hold off on upgrading

[foidulus]

till I find out what the min requirements for Duke Nukem Forever are.

640K

[fragbait]

<old man voice>
To play Doom, I remember having to boot my 386 without loading the TSRs....
</old man voice>

*hits nearest young'un with cane*

-fragbait

Re:Cheapest way to play Doom 3

[dave420]

I hear people going on about binary drivers, but what's the problem? You're running an OS on less than 3% of desktops out there - you should be happy you're getting any drivers at all! :)

Re:thats it?

[bstone]

Well, back in my day, the mainframe had 32K, and the tube was black and green. And we were happy to have it!! ('course, the only game we had was sorting a tray full of punched cards ... but it was FUN and we LOVED it)

What? Matlock's on ... gotta go...

My Ode to 55 Dollars and a month of abstinence

[cOdEgUru]

O' my crisp 55 Dollars and my beautiful wife..
I bid thee both farewell, atleast for a while..
Now, to my 55 Dollars this is for ever..
To my lovely wife, this is a short respite..

My hard earned money, gotta let you go..
To fill the Coffers of Carmack and ID-eo
So that he maketh new game engines and new bump mapped creatures
And I, cowering in the dark, salivating at the games new features..

And to my dear wife, I will see you soon
But first I have to kiss my double barrel shotgun and my precious ammo
Before I can warm the sheets next to you
For here cometh the Cyberdemon and I gotta runnoo..

Re:Zzzz...

[Anonymous Coward]

512k? That should help a lot. You can brag to your buddies that you have 256.5MB of RAM now!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I'll trade...

[HedonismBot]

For all of the good love of The Lord, have you no decency left? How can you ever perish the thought of an exchange between your brother, a living, breathing creature, owner of an immortal soul, a complex personality and a wonderful human brain, product of thousands of years of evolution and an upgrade for your computer? And one which purpose is to more realistically show the hideous nature of the devil's creatures in a videogame, no less! I'm truly outraged and shocked for your reckless behaviour.

Now, maybe if you had a sister...

Possible uses for the extra memory

[rd_syringe]

The extra memory might be used to store:

* More combinations of black, silver, and brown. Using primary colors would unfortunately require another 512MB.
* More darkness.
* An electrical simulation that emulates poor electrical conditions. This will be used to flicker lights on and off randomly.
* More wasted bullets.
* More random metal plating on the letters of the Doom logo.
* A somersault animation. When the Doomguy jumps, he'll backflip now.
* Crates. Lots of crates. With UAC logos on them for variety.
* Shiny metal pipes. Lots of them. At least one will explode as you walk by it; another will have steam coming out of it for a volumetric effect.
* At least one level will have you walking down a hallway only to hear a.) a human scream, b.) demonic growling, or c.) eerie whistling wind coming from an unseen source.
* A hidden TC of Barney Doom, for old time's sake. Destroy Barney in true 3D now.
* Did I mention black, gray, brown, and darkness?

Re:thats it?

[lowmagnet]

MacIntosh? You have to be kidding. That's an apple, but not an Apple.

DDR

[essreenim]

Yeah thjey should just have said 256mb of dual channel DDR. That ought do it!!

Re:I think I am going to hold off on upgrading

[zardor]

You had better get the flux capactor upgrade first........

Re:Ooooh..

[ChrisK077]

According to insiders, John Carmack has coded a special code path for office PCs. You just have to double-click "doom3.ppt" instead of "doom3.exe"

Re:Doom 3 Technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. It's not like those ID developers are rocket scientists. Oh, wait...

FUCK iD SOFTWARE!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I want an awesome game. I want awesome grapics, with awesome rendering, great lighting, 3d shadows, incredible monsters made of a gabillion triangles. And I want the game to have no "jaggies" so it's smooth as glass at 1280x1024 with 60fps. Oh, and 5.1 surround sound with real time effects and echos and reverb.

What? I can't enjoy this on my $299 Walmart PC? FUCK YOU iD SOFTWARE! WTF? YOU GUYS CAN"T CODE. /sarcasm

Re:It is not THAT simple, though

[Anonymous Coward]

Do it - I went up to a gig from 512, and man UT just screams along now.

Indeed. I went from a Radeon VIVO (equivalent to 7000 series) and 512MB of ram to a GeForce 5900 and 1.5 gig of ram and the difference is staggering.

Also, my penis is now HYOOGE and my hair grew back!

WONDERFUL!!

[Nom du Keyboard]

Now I'll be able to run Doom 3 and Longhorn on the same system!

Re:P3 CPUs?

[13Echo]

"Duel"? You mean that the processors fight? Wow!