For more Doom 3 benchmarks , please read Doom 3 Benchmarks revisit .
On Friday Aspyr Media Inc. announced that its Macintosh rebirth of i d Software ’s first person shooter Doom 3 had go golden master and was expected to start ship in mid - March . We ’ve expend the past few day with that GM , play it on one of the fastest Mac play rigs you grease one’s palms decent now , and we ’ve start out some numbers to share with you . The results are eye - curtain raising .
So what ’s the big deal ?
If you ’re not a hardcore gamer , you may be wonder why we ’re make such a giving deal out of this one game . It ’s a respectable question , and the answer is because it ’s not just about this one game .
Doom 3 is bound to sell a lot of copies — i d Software is hugely prize by gamers and the PC rendering of this game has had a caboodle of exposure during its development over the past few years . In fact , you may remember that i d Software ’s own John Carmack several years ago took the Macworld Expo keynote stage with Steve Jobs , in Tokyo , Japan , to demo the inwardness technology that powers this game .
But more importantly than that , i d ’s play technology is licensed to other game developer . So by bring Doom 3 to the Macintosh , Aspyr Media has pave the mode for other games using the same technology to come to the Mac more easily and cheaply in the future tense . And a spirit at Doom 3 ’s operation may be a right index number of how those future games will run on the Mac .
Our run apparatus
First , a little bit on our gaming rig : It ’s a Power Mac G5 2.5GHz dual processor fashion model , equipped with 2.5 GB of RAM and ATI ’s new Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition graphics card — the fastest ATI card you could get on the Mac , equipped with 256 Mbit VRAM .
We tried the game on an ADC - equipped 22 - column inch Apple Cinema Display and a 17 - inch CRT - base Apple Studio Display associate with a DVI to VGA adaptor . We used the Studio Display to report 1600 x 1200 performance , a higher resolving than the Cinema Display could produce , and we double - checked its operation at the same resolutions as the Cinema Display to make certain there was n’t any difference of opinion .
The organization was running Mac OS X10.3.8 — the minimum operating system prerequisite for Doom 3 , since that particular release have some improvements to Apple ’s OpenGL drivers that assist meliorate performance for game like Doom 3 . All tests were performed in full - screen mode , with no other coating running in the background .
All trial run were made using Doom 3 ’s timedemo demo1 statement , accessible through its built - in console . The tests were perform at resolutions from 640 x 480 to 1600 x 1200 , running with and without Full - Scene Anti Aliasing ( FSAA ) .
FSAA a proficiency that helps smooth out the jagged edge of polygonal shape , cater a more naturalistic look . Many gamers like to run with FSAA turned on , especially at humiliated resolution . FSAA causes a performance penalty , as you’re able to see , and frankly , we call back it has diminishing return in Doom 3 — so much of the biz is in dark and dimly lit spaces , anti - aliasing jagged edges do n’t make it look any better .
Anisotropic filtering — which improves the ocular timbre of textures on surface that are viewed at an slant — was left at its default setting ( for this video card ) , 8x . We receive that fiddling with this setting had a negligible effect on frame rate , so we left it at 8x for our tests .
Here ’s what we see :
Doom 3 Benchmarks
BEST RESULTS INBOLD . ALL RESULTS ARE IN FRAMES PER SECOND .
All tests were performed at “ High Quality ” picture options with all Advanced Options turn on ( High Quality Special Effects , Enable Shadows , Enable Specular , Enable Bump Maps ) except for Vertical Sync . Anisotropic filtering was put to 8x . Frames per second averages were achieved running the timedemo demo1 command ; the demo was run doubly , and the higher average was used .
The demo really pushes the computer hardware , and it ’s not the same as what you ’ll go through in much of the secret plan . There ’s a lot of movement , a draw of texture data and a flock of spiritedness and complex geometry . When we go Doom 3 itself with a frame counter , it often stayed in range much higher than these numbers evoke , and the game itself is throttled to 60 physique per secondly — regardless of how fast the demo runs , 60 FPS is as fast as you ’d ever see the actual plot go .
Aspyr tells us that if you have an Nvidia GeForce 6800 card in your Power Mac , chances are you ’ll see modestly higher numbers than what we saw here . Nvidia ’s 6800 tracks higher than the X800 on the PC as well , although the difference in performance is n’t as great as it is on a microcomputer .
Apples to orange
So the bottom railway line is this : If you were go for that your twofold - processor G5 was going to be a Pentium or Athlon - killer whale when it comes to Doom 3 framerates , you ’re going to be disappointed . But there are some authoritative factor to consider .
legion vane sites and cartridge have benchmarked Doom 3 ’s performance on the microcomputer since the biz was released last summer , and these numbers are bound to draw comparisons . You ’ll discover that our trial produced low frame rate average than those personal computer benchmarks you ’ll see elsewhere — in some cases by a petty , in other cases by a circle , calculate on the methodologies used and the systems tested . One way or the other , Mac frame of reference rate seem off by 20 percent or more in many cases in the comparisons we ’ve find out posted online .
We ’ve often find out about the “ Megahertz Myth ” — the idea that Macs can perform as well as or better than PCs despite their lower clock hurrying , and that ’s true for some operation . game do n’t puzzle out that way , though : there ’s no second-stringer for CPU cycles when it occur to games like this . Many tests we ’ve seen are based on Pentium systems working at higher clock velocity than this Power Mac G5 , so that should be considered — scale up the G5 ’s framerate numbers proportionally help reduce that gap .
Also consider that there are essence differences between Macs and PCs like bus architectures , memory speed , different graphics chips that support faster memory and clock fastness , and other factors that make a direct apples - to - apples equivalence super unmanageable .
Finally , it ’s worth noting that despite the lower numbers compared to PCs , we are seeing a very playable anatomy charge per unit of 29.5 FPS running at 1600 x 1200 pixels . And at that resolution , FSAA has really fall returns — Doom 3 is spectacular - expect even without it .
Higher - death penalization
Doom 3 has very postulate system of rules requirements — the in high spirits we ’ve see on a Mac game to engagement . A 1.5GHz G4 is the minimum , along with an ATI Radeon 9600 or Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphic system with at least 64 MiB VRAM . These specs are n’t wildly out of sync with Doom 3 ’s microcomputer counterpart , either — this game really asks a lot of computer hardware disregardless of platform .
It appears that the execution disparity we ’ve discussed is befall mainly when compare the performance of eminent - end Macs to high-pitched - end microcomputer . On Macs that are closer to the minimum system requirements and on mid - range systems , the carrying into action dispute between a Mac and a PC is much small , and in some cases , negligible .
Year - honest-to-god PowerBooks and iMac G5 ’s are just altercate the minimum prerequisite . In a immediate mental test on a 17 - inch PowerBook G4/1.5GHz organization with 1 GB RAM , ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics with 64 MiB VRAM and Mac OS X v10.3.8 , we saw framerates in the low 20 ’s with Doom 3 ’s default options turn on ( resolution at 640 x 480 ) .
A 1.6GHz iMac G5 with sufficient RAM will tear nonremittal numbers in the mid-20 ’s , about the same as a similarly equipped Dell PC run at the same clock speed , according to Aspyr . Aspyr has also benchmarked a Power Mac G5 1.8GHz system equipped with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition card — considered a “ mid - range ” organisation for this secret plan — operate at about 29.6 frames per second , compare to 32 frames per second base for a similarly fit Dell .
With this selective information in mind , it ’s middling clear that the large performance difference between Macs and personal computer is chance on the high end of the system of rules configurations , not the scurvy remnant .
Where ’s the slowdown ?
Aspyr tells us they turn diligently with Apple to make certain “ no stone was left unturned ” when it came to optimizing Doom 3 for the PowerPC ’s Velocity Engine registers , so you ’ll be happy to know that Doom 3 is well - tune for your G4 and G5 . A caveat , however : Early on in development , i d Software determined it had very little to gain in performance by optimizing the secret plan engine for dual - processor shape , as it had with later physical body of Quake 3 Arena . As a result , Mac gamers using double - central processor organisation like ours will see no direct welfare .
ladder the same demo at 640 x 480 with 3-D rendering turned off — which can be done by sic the r_skiprender economic value to 1 in the Doom 3 console table , then running the timedemo — returns an FPS average of good than 106 frames per second . Setting that command gets all the 3D hooey out of the way , telling us how fast the core group game engine itself is running . And that number equate middling well from Macs to PCs . That inculpate that the carrying out divergence we ’re seeing has something to do with the way the 3D graphics are rendered , as opposed to any specific shortcoming in the game locomotive or overall retardation that would account for a difference .
So where does this carrying into action bead hail from ? Some of it , at least , can be explain by the way the Mac works . Mac secret plan developers tally that it ’s much hard to get the Mac to pay tending alone to a game , even if it ’s the only software running , than it is on a PC run Windows XP . That has some payoffs — you may spiel this game in a window , for illustration , find out only a minor performance drop — because “ OpenGL ’s tendrils run much deeper ” in the Mac OS X kernel than they do in Windows , according to one source with whom we spoke .
Will further driver optimization helper ? It ’s entirely possible , although it ’s hard to say how much . We expect such improvements will be iterative and gradual . But if Quake 3 Arena ’s history is any indicator , we ’ll see continued improvement in both driver stop number and nontextual matter Saratoga chip amphetamine until both Macs and PCs are on a level performing field of operations . At least until the next great plot locomotive engine come along .
