Doom 3 Arrives, Notebook Makers Rejoice

Doom 3,the 3D first-person perspective action game sequel to Doom 2,hit the stores on Tuesday and it's already a top seller at Amazon.com and every software retail store in the country most likely. The thing is, if you have alaptop and want to play this game on ityou'd better make sure your specs are up to snuff before buying it. If you don't have a dedicated video card, you're out of luck, idSoft, themaker of Doom 3,lists a bunch of cards from nVidia and ATI that you can use to runthe gameand an integrated graphics card (which many people have on their laptops) is not part of that mix.

The much anticipated Doom 3 is here, it retails for$54.99 at Amazon.com

You'll also need at least 384MB of RAMand 1.7GB of hard drive space to even run the game too. But that's the bare minimum, if you don't have at least 512MB of RAM in your notebook you'll want to cry the performance is so slow. If your processor is slower than a Pentium 41.5GHz based processor, sorry, again you're out of luck. So if you really, really want to play this game and your notebook specs don't make the grade then it's time to upgrade your memory, or if your graphics card or processor are not good enough, you'll have to buy a new notebook.

Enjoy blasting mutant spiders? Better make sure your notebook graphics card can handle rendering these ugly creatures that will attack in Doom 3!

The problem with the notebook market today is that it's still very hard to impossible to upgrade certain components such as video cards and processors. A dirty truth is that although it's in the consumers best interest to have this remedied by manufacturers, the manufacturersarealmost happy to drag their heals on resolving this because forcing people to buy a new computer when all the user reallywants to do is improve one aspect of it, is kind of a nice situation for the manufacturers.

The Doom 3 release also reveals the perennial problem of software outpacing hardware that's one to two years old. If you buy a mid-range laptop today, you can rest assured that some software maker, possibly even Microsoft with their next OS, will releasea programthat simply requires more than your computer can give and you're left kicking the dirt and sulking.You either have to succumb and buy a new computer or sulk some more about the fact that you can't run some software you'd like to.

So my two cents, when you buy a notebook computer today and you want it to last a few years and be able to run every software application, then buy more than you think you'll need.

 

Here is Gamespot's review of it:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/doom3/index.html

Rating: 8.5
While not as remarkable as the technology that fuels it, the game itself is put together well enough to make Doom 3 legitimately great, all things considered. - Greg Kasavin

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Fujitsu S6210: 1.6Ghz PM ~ 768MB RAM ~ 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
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Do you think that these specs are adequate for the game to run smoothly?

1.7 GHz Pentium M (Dothan) 2MB Cache
512 MB PC2700
Radeon Mobility 9700 64 MB

 

yes, you can run the game with those specs, my guess is it would be relatively smooth too.

 

I'm managing to play it on my 2012WLMi:

1.5Ghz Pentium-M (1mb cache Banias)
1GB Ram
64mb Radeon 9700

It's a little bit choppy sometimes at 1024x768 using medium detail, but I think it's certainly still playable (no overclocking)

- Odie

 

I am playing with a HP Pavilion ZD7005 with Pentium4 2.4, 512RAM, GeForce4 448 GO. Runs pretty decent at 640x480 Medium settings. I did tweak my Nvidia settings a bit and increased the PCI mode textures to 1/4 of my system memory.[ ]

 

Do you think that these specs are adequate for the game to run smoothly?

1.7 GHz Pentium M (Dothan) 2MB Cache
512 MB PC2700
Radeon Mobility 9700 64 MB

to Lundmark;
of course this system plays smoothly?no doubt...[ ]

http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/products/mobile/notebooks/amilo_m_wide.html

 

Hey All,
Im Getting a Acer Ferrari 3200,
processor Athlon 64 2800, how many GHZ is this running
+ will it be able to run the game

Im pretty noobie so i honestly don't know

Thx Cam

 

As far as the Ferrari notebook is concerned, you should be able to play it if your video card is 64MB or above (dedicated ram) and above 512MB system ram. I know that my zv5000 will play it at low detail. Also, my desktop PC is an Athlon 1800xp, with 512 DDR ram on an nForce board with SHARED 32MB GeForce2 graphix, and I can STILL play Doom 3, even on that, even though I had several people tell me there was no way it would run on a system with 32MB video, let alone SHARED 32MB. Even at 640x480 in low detail, Doom 3 still looks better than pretty much any other game out there running on high detail.

Cheers,

Stevo


zv5000z: Ath64_3200+ (2.0GHz) - 1GB DDR - 80GB 5400rpm - 64MB 440 - 15.0" XGA - Win2k (tentatively)

 

I got the zv5000....it's with radeon ati 9000 and i upgraded the RAM from 256 to 700+ (500 chip)I did this because i hoped it would help for those games i play, counter-strike and diablo II expansion, those games does almost not require anything, but still I had problems with chopping, and now with more RAM i still have the same problems with chopping thou now it gets faster in to windows and maybe a little faster into the games. I can't really see the problem, if you know what the problem may be please tell me...

It start to chopp when i suddenly use spells or if i shoot at someone, then the pc just stop for some seconds and starts to chop til it get it under control again, btw cs got much better with more RAM, diablo did not....