Official Doom III upgrade advice

Assuming that the weekend is shaped like a right-angle turn and that you covet Doom III's American launch date, id Software's latest hellbound FPS is in fact just around the corner, and with that in mind it's a good time to invest some eye-time in the latest pre-release bauble to bear the name - the Official Doom III Hardware Guide.

Hosted on and authored by HardOCP (the same website that ran Doom III benchmarks recently), the Hardware Guide is aimed at giving you advice on which bits of your kit may need upgrading in order to really impact performance, and has been written with id's blessing and approval, based on a reported 65 hours' worth of benchmarking performed at the developer's Texan office.

Interestingly, the guide's conclusions are drawn not based on the traditional time demos and what it calls "synthetic benchmarks" but rather on actual chunks of gameplay at points that the chaps and id determined would be most representative of the average session. It focuses very much on image quality and maintaining frame rate, and analyses things using various hardware set-ups that swap out motherboards, graphics cards, processors and other bits and bobs.

It also notes that, unlike a lot of PC games, Doom III will actually run well on its minimum specification - something that is borne out in the results on display. And, on the other end of the scale, deals with the 'ultimate' system - the sort of kit that can handle the Ultra visual quality mode without breaking much of a sweat - and it's a beast, really, using a 64-bit Athlon, 2GB RAM, a GeForce 6800 Ultra and a keyboard and mouse carved out of the bones of rich orphans. WSADdening for most.

Still, with the game a little over a week away in the States and just over a fortnight for those of us here in Europe, if there's an upgrade to be performed, this seems to be the document you need. Check it out here.