Seem's we have all gone Doom 3 crazy around here at the moment, but what do you expect ?
The current crop of games on the horizon look like the best batch of games to hit shelves since the late 1990's back in the Half-Life and before that Quake 3 days.

More to the point though, is your PC cut out to smoothly play Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and Gran Turismo 4 .

Lets look at the spec's for the big 2, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2.

Doom 3

Minimum Spec's : 1Ghz CPU, 256Mb RAM and a GeForce 1 or Radeon 7 series graphics card.

On a GeForce 1 I would imagine you would be running the game in 640x480 and I think it wouldn't be very enjoyable either, if you can get it to play with the above specifications then good luck.

Recommended Spec's : 2Ghz CPU 512 MB ram Radeon 9800 5-channel audio.

I think that system would just about get you through the game ok but dont expect to see it in all its glory.

To get the most enjoyment out of this game i think you will be looking at systems with the following specs : Athlon XP 3200+ 3.06Ghz Pentium 4 512MB of RAM Radeon 9800 Pro or GeForce 5900 Ultra 5-channel audio.


Half-Life 2

Minimum spec's : 1.2GHz powered PC with 256MB RAM, Win 98/ME/2000/XP and a DirectX 7 compatible graphics card, meaning you won't need a supercomputer to run Half-Life 2 but don't expect to see reflective water,dynamic shadows and bump-mapped textures.

Recommended spec's : 2.0GHz or higher 512 mb ram or higher, GeForce4 Ti4800 128 ddr or ATI Radeon 9600 pro.

As with Doom 3 you would be looking at a beast of a PC to get these games running in all there glory, but the thing is, will they be worth it ? oh and where did I put my credit card.

Obviously people are going to be looking at upgrades in the near future as these two games are obviously going to be the benchmarks for future games oh aswell as far-cry of course.

Think I need to spend a few hundred quid i think

I slowly upgrade mine constantly, it's the occasional platform jump that cost the money :/

Annoying when you gotta change more than 1 component at a time.

i need a new PC. but i aint forking out for one
Tough life... i can deal with it!

Upgraded mine a while back for the HL2 release, silly me!
Now running an XP2800+ with Rad9800pro. Let's see if it can handle doom3 then see if I can afford to upgrade

One things for sure. I won't take the budget route next time with the Athlons, I'll be going for a water cooled pentium.

Bad move, you want water cooled Athlon 64 S939

Water cooling is uber expensive? and u cant take PC to lan!

What is so bad about a 2800 athlon with 9800 radeon? Pwns my pc

Don't get me wrong it's not all that bad. But I've just recently built my friend a system with a 3.2Gig Pentium and Radeon 9800XT and it shit's on mine

You've got a crap 9800 tho haven't ya, 128bit memory interface = poo, that's why you struggle

It's a softmodded 9800SE. But techinally it's no different from the 9800pro apart from the fan. All i've done is enabled the 2nd bus. Sure it's 256 not 128. Although it's only got a 128Mb memory.

Well, you have virtally the same sysem as me, cept I have a genuine 256bit memory interace on my 9700pro, but I never have speed issues in games, go figure.

I also have a Athlon Barton 2800+ with a Radeon 9700pro and aint had any problems.

I suspect Scrappy is using an overclocked 386.

I'm not saying it's shit, it's far from shit.. just oh damn I don't know

Post us ur 3DMark2003 result so we can compare.

Dont even try James, mani's ePenis is much bigger then yours

Damn right

Useless c unts.

Quote: Mani
Bad move, you want water cooled Athlon 64 S939

that 350 quid !