Doom 3

Even with ASUS/ATI's latest, we were limiting ourselves to High Quality settings, though we enabled all the special effects.

Map Delta2a @ 1280x1024

	Min	Max	Ave
No AA/AF	15	64	46.1
4xAA/8xAF	19	62	41.5

The ASUS Extreme AX800XT/2DT handles AntiAliasing and Anisotropic filtering pretty well, and Doom 3 was certainly playable with those settings enabled. However, as you can see by the logged framerates, there are more valleys with AA/AF on, and truth be told, Doom 3 is so dark by default, the image quality isn't improved all that much with AA/AF at 1280x1024. In case you're wondering why the drop at both resolutions at the 21 second mark, that was when the BFG came into play.

Map Delta2a @ 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 w/AA and AF disabled

	Min	Max	Ave
1280x1024	15	64	46.1
1600x1200	13	63	43.95

In single player mode, 1600x1200 was playable when there wasn't much happening. For those of you familiar with the Delta2a level, the action pretty much starts right away, and the drops in framerates occurred once the demons started attacking. A BFG shot dumped the framerates near single digits, so in our opinion, if you want all the eyecandy on, you're best to stay at 1280x1024.

Doom 3 Multiplayer

While Doom 3 is primarily a single player game, there is a multiplayer element to it. As with most multiplayer games, framerates are king, so we dropped the resolution to 1024x768 (though maintained high quality settings) and connected to a couple servers with a minimum of 3 players and a maximum ping of 50.

Multiplayer @ 1024x768 w/AA and AF disabled

	Min	Max	Ave
Tomiko Reactor	33	68	53.9
Frag Chamber	43	66	61.4

The ASUS Extreme AX800XT/2DT handled the multiplayer maps quite easily. The Frag Chamber didn't create any problems, and the game was quite smooth. The Tomiko Reactor also ran smoothly, though the drop at the 39 second mark was when I spawned in the reactor area. The shadow effects and lighting are quite intense here, and it did put a burden on the card.

Image Quality

While the game itself is merely average in my opinion, it is a beautiful game engine if you have the hardware to make the most of it. At 1280x1024, the game looks absolutely amazing, and very playable.

Multiplayer looks nice, but I felt that the default HQ settings were a bit too dark for online gameplay. As you can see, 1024x768 looks pretty good, though aliasing is a bit more obvious.

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