Doom 3 Buyer's Guide

PERFORMANCE Doom 3: System Summary

Hardware	Component	Price
CPU & Cooling	AMD Athlon 64 FX53 Socket 939 Retail	$825
Motherboard	Abit AV8 (VIA K8T800 PRO) Socket 939	$121
Memory	2GB (2 X 1024MB) OCZ PC3200 EB	$594
Video Card	256MB NVidia 6800 Ultra	$538
Monitor	NEC/Mitsubishi FP2141SB 22" Diamondtron CRT	$664
Computer Case	Coolermaster Praetorian (PAC-T01-E1) Silver $114 plus 520W OCZ Power Stream $138 Shipped	$252
Sound Card	Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 Retail	$83
Speakers	Klipsch Pro Media Ultra 5.1	$349
Networking	Onboard 10/100/1000 Ethernet	$0
Hard Drive	74GB Western Digital 74GB Raptor 10,000 RPM (BOOT) + Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM SATA (Model 13G0255 - 8Mb)	$177 $183
DVD/CD-RW	Plextor PX-712A 12X DVD+/-R/RW	$140
Bottom Line	$3926

For $3926 you can put together a Performance Doom 3 system that will be the standard to which everyone else will compare. It certainly is not cheap, but if you want the best Doom 3 experience that you can find, this system will not disappoint.

Keep in mind that you still need to purchase a keyboard, mouse, Operating System, and of course, Doom 3.

The combination of the nVidia 6800 Ultra, the 22" Diamondtron NEC/Mitsubishi, and the FX53 will crank a beautiful Doom 3 picture at the highest frame rate possible and the greatest detail of any desktop system today. Add the wonderful surround capabilities of the Doom 3 played through an Audigy 2 driving Klipsch Pro Media speakers, and Doom 3 can actually make the hair on your neck stand up.

There are many reasons why most gamers prefer a CRT for gaming, but if you prefer a flat screen monitor the big and fast 20" Dell 2001FP at its new $810 price would be a great choice for Doom 3 or any other gaming. Dell recently reduced the price of the 2001FP from $999 to $810 which makes this very fast flat panel an easier pill to swallow. If you want the biggest, best flat-panel monitor you can buy, our Display Editor still recommends the Samsung 213T with a 21.3" screen. The 213T has also recently dropped to around $1040, which is a nice decrease from the $1200 of just a couple of months ago.

We included 2GB of OCZ 3200EB in a kit with two 1GB dimms. We chose the 2x1GB configuration over 4x512MB since you can still use 1T Command rate with 2 dimms. 4 dimms require a slower 2T command rate on the Athlon 64. None of the 1GB dimms we have seen can match the timings of the best 512MB dimms, but the OCZ 3200EB comes much closer than most with rated 2.5-2-3 timings. We found the performance was very close to a pair of the fastest 512's with the added advantage of 2GB of memory for Doom 3. It is even possible to go to 4GB with four of the 1GB dimms, but that seemed overkill based on what we saw in testing the impact of total memory on Doom 3 performance.

The Plextor 12X DVD burner is used due to Plextor's superb reputation and responsiveness to customer needs. It is also the only 12X DVD burner we have seen with 8MB of cache, which could make a difference at high DVD burning speeds. As a personal side note, when I have problems burning CDs or DVDs, or I have a game CD/DVD that is unreadable I always got to my Plextor. It normally will read most anything, and I'm confident that if the Plextor won't read it, then it is likely nothing will read it. That is always great assurance on a gaming PC.

We also used a 74GB 10,000RPM SATA hard drive for the fastest boot and Doom 3 load you can get short of high-end SCSI, plus a 250GB Hitachi with quiet fluid bearings to store the games, downloads, images, and add-ons that a hard-core gamer will accumulate.