I forgot how annoying the DRM in Doom 3 v1.0 was, but finally remembered how to get around it 😁 😊

Core i5-3350p 3.1GHz, MSI Z77A-G43 (LGA1155), 8gb DDR3-800, NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 2gb PCIe (310.90 WHQL drivers), ASUS Xonar DG, DirectX 11, Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit.

1024x768 Ultra Quality=256.2

You're right Skyscraper, the original Doom 3 is much faster than version 1.3.1 😎

My latest toy arrived in the mail today - a QDI Advance 12T motherboard. It's based on the Apollo Pro 266T chipset with native Tualatin and DDR support. I've always really liked the Pro 266T chipset; it's easily the fastest P3 chipset out there (that I've tested), has a dedicated 266 MB/s link between north and south bridge, and easily the best AGP support of all VIA PIII chipsets. This board has no problem running cards in 4x AGP mode!
PIII-S just screams with 2GB of 300MHz, 2-2-2 DDR memory! This is a full 8 fps faster than my previous attempt with an 694T-based board, and far ahead of my 2.2GHz Northwood P4.

PIII-S @ 1575MHz (150MHz FSB), 2GB DDR-300 2-2-2, GeForce 6800GT AGP (81.98), Apollo Pro 266T, X-Fi ExtremeMusic, XP Pro SP3
1024x768 Ultra:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

My latest toy arrived in the mail today - a QDI Advance 12T motherboard. It's based on the Apollo Pro 266T chipset with native Tualatin and DDR support. I've always really liked the Pro 266T chipset; it's easily the fastest P3 chipset out there (that I've tested), has a dedicated 266 MB/s link between north and south bridge, and easily the best AGP support of all VIA PIII chipsets. This board has no problem running cards in 4x AGP mode!
PIII-S just screams with 2GB of 300MHz, 2-2-2 DDR memory! This is a full 8 fps faster than my previous attempt with an 694T-based board, and far ahead of my 2.2GHz Northwood P4.

PIII-S @ 1575MHz (150MHz FSB), 2GB DDR-300 2-2-2, GeForce 6800GT AGP (81.98), Apollo Pro 266T, X-Fi ExtremeMusic, XP Pro SP3

Very nice!

I own that boards little brother, the Micro-ATX QDI Advance 6T 😀. The QDI Advance 6T has the Apollo Pro 133T chipset and therefore uses SDR memory so its prettly much an Advance 12T cut in half 😜

Standard Def Steve wrote:

My latest toy arrived in the mail today ...

Nice - a very legitimate performance P-III/XP rig ably running D3 with a foot squarely planted in the 2001 time frame.

tincup wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

My latest toy arrived in the mail today ...

Nice - a very legitimate performance P-III/XP rig ably running D3 with a foot squarely planted in the 2001 time frame.

well except the video card, a 6800GT is slightly 2004 🤣

oops. Er um, I guess my remark should read as "a foot squarely..." as opposed to "two feet squarely" haha...

The Q6700 I found in the dumpster along with the warped X38 board did pretty well (using another X38 board). The Kentsfield cant touch the Wolfsdale obviously but its not slow.

I took my E8600 out for spin in the Asus X38 DDR3 board cooled by a Thermalright Ultra-120 😀

The E8600 managed to beat the E8400 running in the Gigabyte P35 DDR3 system but not by much. The the GTX 580 overclock gained 4 FPS so even with stock GPU clocks the E8600 X38 system would have ended up ahead. The E8600 is clocked 100 mhz higher than the E8400 though, clock for clock both systems seems totally even.

1024*768 Ultra

First the Geforce 8800 GTX.

The Geforce GTX 285, this card and the GTX 580 performs pretty much the same in Doom 3 with this CPU.

And last the overclocked Geforce GTX 580, CPU bottlenecked.

OK. I picked up an E6700 C2D 2.66 to max out the Biostar build I've been posting results of. This cpu also increases L2 from 2mb -> 4mb, and maxes out motherboard fsb 800 -> 1066. It's still hampered by single-channel ram but them's the breaks.

Timedemo ANYTHING GOES Round 3
Doom 3 v1.31

1024 x 768 Ultra [AA OFF] = 131.9

C2D E6700 2.66 1066/4mb, BioStar P4M890-M7-TE/socket 775, EVGA 7900GTX/512mb [92.91], 2gb DDR2/pc4300 [single-channel], SBLive!, XP Pro SP3

I'd like to post CPU-Z and Demo screens but I'm not too handy with that stuff..

Question: What kind of reasonable OC could I expect on stock voltage/air cooled [CM Hypre 101 w/ 2 fans]? I can control cpu clock in BIOS but not core voltage.

tincup wrote:

OK. I picked up an E6700 C2D 2.66 to max out the Biostar build I've been posting results of. This cpu also increases L2 from 2mb […]
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OK. I picked up an E6700 C2D 2.66 to max out the Biostar build I've been posting results of. This cpu also increases L2 from 2mb -> 4mb, and maxes out motherboard fsb 800 -> 1066. It's still hampered by single-channel ram but them's the breaks.

Timedemo ANYTHING GOES Round 3
Doom 3 v1.31

1024 x 768 Ultra [AA OFF] = 131.9

C2D E6700 2.66 1066/4mb, BioStar P4M890-M7-TE/socket 775, EVGA 7900GTX/512mb [92.91], 2gb DDR2/pc4300 [single-channel], SBLive!, XP Pro SP3

I'd like to post CPU-Z and Demo screens but I'm not too handy with that stuff..

Question: What kind of reasonable OC could I expect on stock voltage/air cooled [CM Hypre 101 w/ 2 fans]? I can control cpu clock in BIOS but not core voltage.

Do your board lock the PCI-E clock ar 100 MHz? If not ~3 GHz will be as high as it will go. If your board do lock the PCI-E at 100 then the CPU will do 3.1 - 3.2 at stock voltage if it has a low VID. If the CPU has a high VID then 3.2+

Not much but I *can* adjust CPU clock, DRAM voltage & timings, PCIE clock [100-150].

Idle is currently around 40-degree C, but it's fairly warm this evening. The E4500 idled around 35-degrees but it was quite a bit cooler out 2 weeks ago. I'll try a simple 3.1 clock OC just for fun and see how it goes.

But regardless, 131.9 FPS for a demanding XP game like Doom3 is plenty good and thoroughly meets the specs for a "Failsafe XP Home Of Last Resort" for when the time comes when Win XXX no longer supports XP stuff at all. The idea is for this rig to be stable long-term by building in decent stock performance. It also doubles as a super powerful test bed for W98 games that were highly modded during the XP era and like the extra horsepower [mostly combat flying and racing simulations].

My latest dumpster find: a complete LGA775 system. It even came with a hard drive and fresh install of Windows 7. And even better, the previous owner overclocked it! The Core 2 Duo e6600 was running at a nice 3GHz on a 1333MHz FSB.

Complete specs as found:
Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard (nForce 650i SLI chipset)
Core 2 Duo e6600, overclocked to 3GHz/1333FSB by previous owner. Stock voltage and Intel HSF.
4GB DDR2-667 CL4 memory, dual-channel.
BFG GeForce 8600GT 512MB GDDR3, slightly overclocked.
Ultra case, Corsair CX500 PSU
Windows 7 x86 SP1

640x480 Medium: 188.7 fps
1024x768 Ultra: 122.4 fps

Obviously hitting a GPU bottleneck there. I must say, I'm thrilled to have a 775 board to play with again. I have a few CPUs sitting around (Pentium D up to Core 2 Quad) that I'll eventually get around to testing with this thing. 😀

Close but no cigar, I have a feeling this is a little bit GPU bottlenecked though.

Spec. i7 2600K@5 GHz, Gigabyte G1 Sniper 2 Z68, 8GB DDR3 2133 CL9-11-10-27, XFX Geforce GTX 285 Black Ed., onboard audio, XP-SP3.

1024*768 Ultra: 561 FPS

I got a slightly better score with 1T memory and a slight OC on the GTX 285.

Spec. i7 2600K@5 GHz, Gigabyte G1 Sniper 2 Z68, 8GB DDR3 2133 CL9-10-10-27, XFX Geforce GTX 285 Black Ed., onboard audio, XP-SP3.

1024*768 Ultra: 575.7 FPS

Ths GTX 285 turned out to be a large bottleneck, with an overclocked GTX 580 and 200 MHz extra core speed the FPS improved.

i7 2600K@5.2 GHz, Gigabyte G1 Sniper 2 Z68, 8GB DDR3 2133 CL9-10-10-27, Geforce GTX 580 OC 296.10, onboard audio, XP-SP3

1024*768 Ultra: 644.5 FPS

Dammit! You sunk my battleship! 🤣
I'm gonna have to do a quick 4.6GHz run later on. Probably won't get me up to 644fps, but hey, every little bit counts!

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Dammit! You sunk my battleship! 🤣
I'm gonna have to do a quick 4.6GHz run later on. Probably won't get me up to 644fps, but hey, every little bit counts!

I would probably get about the same score as you in Windows 6.x but Windows XP helps with less overhead. The difference is less with faster systems but as you say every little bit counts.
CPU wise the 2600K at 5.2 should beat the 4930K at 4.5 in most older games but Doom 3 really really loves memory bandwidth and socket 2011 has plenty of that.

All right, once last try. This time, I even unhooked my second monitor so that the system wouldn't have to draw a second desktop. Whether or not that actually gave me a few extra frames, I have no idea. 😁

i7-4930k @ 4.6GHz, Asus GTX 970 (347.25), 32GB DDR3-2400 CL10, Asus Rampage IV Gene (x79), onboard audio, Win7 x64

Here's that little Optiplex 780 again, this time running Windows 7.

640x480 medium: 28.6 fps
1024x768 Ultra: 24.2 fps
1280x1024 Ultra: 16.5 fps

Core 2 Duo e7500 (2.93GHz, 1066FSB, 3MB L2), Intel GMA X4500HD, 4GB DDR3-1066 CL7, onboard audio, Win7 x64 SP1

Here were the XP results:
640x480 Medium: 35.3 fps
1024x768 Ultra: 26.0 fps
1280x1024 Ultra: 17.2 fps

Strange how 640x480 takes a bigger hit than 1024x768, despite both resolutions being completely GPU limited.

I finally got around to installing one of my GTX 560s in the P5N-E SLI based dumpster find. I'll eventually get around to testing some of my other CPUs in this machine, but for now here's the C2D E6600 that it came with. Stock-clocked and overclocked, Windows XP and Windows 7. All tests run at 1024x768, Ultra.

Windows 7:

C2D E6600 @ 2.4GHz/1066FSB, GeForce GTX 560 (341.44), 8GB DDR2-800 5-5-5, Asus P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i), X-Fi Ti, Win7 x86

C2D E6600 @ 3.0GHz/1333FSB, GeForce GTX 560 (341.44), 8GB DDR2-800 5-5-5, Asus P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i), X-Fi Ti, Win7 x86

For the sake of comparison, here were the Opteron 185/Win7/GTX 560 results:
At 3.0GHz: 156.7 fps
At 3.13GHz: 172.1 fps.

So while IPC is clearly higher on the Core 2 system, at 3GHz it's actually not quite as fast as I had expected/hoped it would be. It beats the 3.13GHz Opteron, but it doesn't really leave it in the dust. What's strange is that the Opteron gained 16 fps from 133MHz, while the C2D only gained 8fps from a 600MHz overclock (it's repeatable, too). I believe part of the problem is the memory. The Opteron is stuck with DDR1, but the memory timings are very tight, and DRAM frequency increases along with the overclock. The Core 2 Duo on the other hand is making do with whatever cheap ass memory I could find in the spare parts bin. Timings are relatively loose and DRAM frequency remains constant, but at least there's 8GB of the stuff. Once I'm done experimenting/benchmarking I'll install the 64 bit version of Windows 7 to take advantage of all that memory.

Windows XP:

C2D E6600 @ 2.4GHz/1066FSB, GeForce GTX 560 (275.33), 8GB DDR2-800 5-5-5, Asus P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i), X-Fi Ti, XP

C2D E6600 @ 3.0GHz/1333FSB, GeForce GTX 560 (275.33), 8GB DDR2-800 5-5-5, Asus P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i), X-Fi Ti, XP

For the sake of comparison, here were the Opteron 185/XP results:
At 3.0GHz: 174.3 fps (with 8800GTS SLI)
At 3.13GHz: 192.4 fps (with GTX 260)

I benched an Athlon 64 4000+ with a DFI Nforce 4 board for the overclocked period correct list. The difference between Doom 3 version 1.3 and the older versions isnt huge when you are GPU bottlenecked, only ~5%.

Athlon 64 4000+@3120 San Diego, DFI Nforce 4 Vanilla, 2x1GB DDR520 CL3,3,2,7 1T, Geforce 6800@425/1100 92.91, onboard audio, Windows XP SP3

1024*768 Ultra: 120.6 FPS. The system is bottlecked by the video card and or memory, I will look into that later.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I finally got around to installing one of my GTX 560s in the P5N-E SLI based dumpster find. I'll eventually get around to testing some of my other CPUs in this machine, but for now here's the C2D E6600 that it came with.

So while IPC is clearly higher on the Core 2 system, at 3GHz it's actually not quite as fast as I had expected/hoped it would be. It beats the 3.13GHz Opteron, but it doesn't really leave it in the dust. What's strange is that the Opteron gained 16 fps from 133MHz, while the C2D only gained 8fps from a 600MHz overclock (it's repeatable, too). I believe part of the problem is the memory. The Opteron is stuck with DDR1, but the memory timings are very tight, and DRAM frequency increases along with the overclock. The Core 2 Duo on the other hand is making do with whatever cheap ass memory I could find in the spare parts bin. Timings are relatively loose and DRAM frequency remains constant, but at least there's 8GB of the stuff. Once I'm done experimenting/benchmarking I'll install the 64 bit version of Windows 7 to take advantage of all that memory.

The performance is fine, Doom 3 is just incredible sensitive to memory latency. That system was a great dumpster find 😀