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.
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wjh - Monday, September 13, 2004 - link
Hello, and thanks alot for such a great article! I am currently doing the research to build an FX-53 system with 2 Gb of memory.I'm having trouble locating the OCZ memory that you describe-- it could not be found on pricewatch, so I went to the vendor's site and found this:
2GB Dual Channel Kit PN- OCZ4002048EBDCPE-K
but it has these timings:
CL 2.5-3-2-8
(CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS) Available in 512MB (2x256MB), 1GB (2x512MB) and 2GB (2x1GB) Dual Channel Optimized Kits
and you specified default timings of 2.5-2-3.
Did you really mean 2.5-3-2, or do I have the wrong part?
I would appreciate your help in finding the right 2 Gb kit, hopefully at a decent price.
Thanks alot!
MAME - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link
You guys are being too critical of the article. $1,000 is a lot for a value system for general use, but this article is about getting a system that can play the highest demanding game DECENTLY.With that in mind, $1,000 is actually a good price for most of the hardware (minus the actual game).
$280 for the 6800 is a lot but that's the price you gotta pay for top of the line performance these days. It's only $80 more than the 9800 pro, and has almost twice the performance.
Wesley, you did a good job with the choices for the most part. Don't worry about these guys.
archcommus87 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
I agree for the most part with what Anandtech has posted here. True, it seems ridiculous that the value system has a nearly $300 video card, however it doesn't say budget, it says value, and they really are just trying to list the best bang for the buck.For the record though, I'm running an Athlon XP 2100+ overclocked to 2800+ speeds, 1 GB of cheapo memory and a 9800 Pro at stock speeds, and I'm running the game at usually 20-25 FPS or higher at 10x7 res, high settings, 6x AA and 16x AF.
link130 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Wesley Fink, think carefully before your responseActually even if we use YOUR definition of the term "value" of performance/price. a modest overclock of an 2400+ xp-M is about 2.4ghz while a modest overclock of a 2800+ A64 is 2.0ghz.
the A64 costs 2x the AXP while by extrapolating the AXP cpu graphs from this site, you can expect them to perfrom within 5fps in doom 3. still a good value for this game?
I actually get an average of around 40 fps at 800x600 medium quality with all the effects on except aa and vsync. in real gameplay on my 2.4ghz AXP-Bobile with a $50 ti4200 64mb @ 300/600 and cheap 512 ddr400 ram. after tweaking the cache settings in the cfg file, the game runs very smooth (almost no jerking effect even opening doors). now THAT is real value.
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
I'm actually playing D3 reasonably well on an Athlon XP 2.3 GHz (2500+ XP-M OC) with 1 GB RAM and a 9800 Pro. Still, 1024x768 HQ can be a bit choppy.Honestly, though, timedemo is NOT the way to determine gaming performance. Especially since the timedemo in Doom 3 disables audio. Yes, it's repeatable, but that doesn't make it accurate. And if the AI is actually running during a timedemo, I would be surprised. If you want to give a real recommendation for system performance, you probably need to use a utility like FRAPS and play through an entire level of the game, then report low, average, and high FPS. But then that would take a lot longer.
I also have to wonder how the lack of sound comes into play with the RAM use, as sound effects can chew up a decent amount of RAM. The benchmarking method (run timedemo 3 times and report the highest or average of the last two, I think?) would also negate the advantage of having more RAM. I know the first time I run the timedemo, even with 1 GB RAM, there is a lot of hard drive use and the average FPS is usually 25% or so less than on subsequent runs. In real gameplay, you don't continually rerun the exact same sequence, so you don't always get the benefit of cached data.
But all that's a bit off topic. The main thing is, the recommendations are pretty good, if expensive. I would think that a current Athlon XP system with a high end video card would go a long way to reaching good performance, if that's what you want. If you're building a new machine, the 9800 Pro isn't the best choice, but if you already have one (I do), I'm not sure it's worth $300 or $400 to upgrade to the 6800/GT.
And for you ATI people, I have to wonder how this will affect things:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1487...
MercenaryForHire - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Doom 3 is playable on ANYTHING.http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...
Now quit bitching and play. :P
- M4H
Jbog - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
#45 Runamile, what do you mean by "very playable" and "just fine?" Maybe you could put that into terms that we can all understand, such as FPS and Image Quality? Otherwise your remarks have no objective quality.Runamile - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
I too also agree that $1000 for a value system is a little steep. It probally should of been around $700 IMHO.But thats cool. Ive already beaten D3 on an AMD 2200+, 512MB 2100, and ATI 8500 128MB. With it all @ 1024x768 w/o bump mapping, the system was very playable and looked just fine. And that rig will run about $350 these days.
Momental - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
I'd also like a little clarification as to why the 3400+ was recommended over the 3500+. True, the former is cheaper than the latter and actually seems to offer a wee bit better performance, in some cases. However, having a 939-based system allows one to merely upgrade a processor, should they become less expensive rather than replacing the board and the processor. Yes? No? I'm new to all this, so bear with me. ;)Fantastic article, by the way!!
Kung Lau - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
"The purpose of this Doom 3 Buyer's Guide is take all that we've learned in these reviews and make some basic recommendations for a killer Doom 3 system. Since desires, designs, and pocketbooks are different, you will find three recommendations here - Performance, Mainstream, and Value."It's almost like Wesley saw all these comments coming...
Value= 2004 Honda Civic for $12,000k
Budget= 1967 Volkswagon Beetle for $200.00
They will both get you from point A to point B, but I would hardly consider them synonymous, except for both being vehicles.
I can put together a system for under $800 using Newegg too, but I won't know what works well together for Doom 3 (specifically) until I've assembled the system after delivery. If something doesn't mesh or isn't quite up to par, I would have to send it back for another part.
I think the recommended lists provides for a basic groundwork to build from. Many will have different variations on the builds.
People take stuff too seriously around here.
And btw, I, along with many others here on Anandtech, bought a Dell 4600 system with 9800pro for GAMING for under $500 without monitor (had already) from the Hot Deals forum a while back when the deals were outrageous.