Just my 2 cents.....
 
In an article published in Maximum PC, Carmack actually nodded towards ATI and is a little upset with NVIDIA and their poor Half Life 2 and DX9 performance.

As of right now, ATI cards are the choice for DX9 gaming. When you enable AA or AF with ATI cards, there is less of a performance hit compared to Nvidia. However, the Geforce FX 5950 is quite a performer and matches up well against the Radeon 9800 XT, but its the only one, every other Geforce FX, whether it is 5200, 5600, 5700, 5800, just don't match up to their Radeon counterparts, the DX9 performance is bad, but DX8 and below is ok...but you want DX9 anyways! The Radeon 9500 PRO, Radeon 9600 XT and Radeon 9700 PRO are all great cards. As is the Radeon 9800 PRO AND XT, as well as NON-PRO.

Well I am no expert on video cards, but using some common sense I can come up with an answer to your questions.
 
It would be foolish of ID Software to mark their minimum requirements too high. After all, they Do want to sell the game to as many people as possible. So from a marketting and sales stand point, I see that ID Software will most probably have to set the minimum requirement for a video card somewhere around 64MB or (more probably) 128MB.
 
As for Nvidia vs. Ati, it would also be completely foolish of IDSoftware to lean towards one versus the other. People WILL have Nvidia cards, and if you try to tell them "To play this game you MUST have an ATI card", chances are that they will just laugh and not buy the game!
 
So from a strictly marketting and sales point of view, IDSoftware will be somewhat forced to support BOTH Nvidia and Ati (despite what Carmack prefers).
 
Also, as I mentioned earlier chances are 128MB would be sufficient if not super.
 
So in both cases a 256MB Ati or Nvidia will be sufficient, if not super for Doom 3.
 
remmeber: IDSoftware wants to sell the game. And they cannot sell it by pushing requirements too high or sticking with support for only one video card maker.
 
That's just my 2 cents.

Actually I do think there will be quite a number that plain won't laugh and be prodded into purchasing an ATi graphics card, just my $0.02 worth

I'm not laughing, neither was I prodded into buying my 9800XT after my Albatron Ti4200P Turbo died, a wonderful card and will outperform many FX's. I read all the tests and Nvidia came out second in all the conclusions reached by the testers......If I could have had a Nvidia that performed as well with AA and AF turned on then I would have but those cards consistantly underperformed, even the superdooper Gainwards watercooled thingy. However to answer the original posters query. The 5700, or, dare I say, the 9600XT should do the job adaquately.
Chris

I have an ATI card ( 9000 pro with 128MB to be exact ). Any idea on whether I'll have to update the card to play Doom3/HL2? My monitor is only 1280x1024 so no high res stuff here.
 
I have not seen any recommend system specs for either game yet. I'm also starting to see recommended processor speeds go up as well. A processor upgrade (not counting memory) is quite a bit less then a video card upgrade. I seriously doubt that I'll upgrade my 9 month old system just for Doom3.

Quote:I have an ATI card ( 9000 pro with 128MB to be exact ). Any idea on whether I'll have to update the card to play Doom3/HL2? My monitor is only 1280x1024 so no high res stuff here.

I have not seen any recommend system specs for either game yet. I'm also starting to see recommended processor speeds go up as well. A processor upgrade (not counting memory) is quite a bit less then a video card upgrade. I seriously doubt that I'll upgrade my 9 month old system just for Doom3.


Nobody plays games at 14000x1050 or 1600x1200 yet! so i don't think having a 256MB video card will make any difference at all compared to a 128MB one!!!

I'll stick to what i have untill it actually "Makes a Rsonable Difference" to upgrade!

don't be too concerned about your Video card for now. use it untill you feel maybe you need a new video card to run your applications/games. besides they come up with new stuff every 3 - 6 months, and right now i'm waiting for intel 64-bit CPU's, just like i was waiting for P4C (800Mhz with HT) and P4B (533Mhz FSB) and P4 (first socket 478) and so on.

Who knows when Doom III comes out!!! By then we could be using 64-bit platforms and Longhorn, or maybe we will be back to linux.

Quote:Nobody plays games at 14000x1050 or 1600x1200 yet!

Umm, I do... I regularly run Q3A/TA, RTCW, and W:ET at 1600x1200, max details... I usually stay around 90 FPS, only slightly dropping some frames when there is intense video processing.

That's with a P4 2.26GHz, and Geforce4 Ti4400...

Quote:Quote:Nobody plays games at 14000x1050 or 1600x1200 yet!

Umm, I do... I regularly run Q3A/TA, RTCW, and W:ET at 1600x1200, max details... I usually stay around 90 FPS, only slightly dropping some frames when there is intense video processing.

That's with a P4 2.26GHz, and Geforce4 Ti4400...


yac!!!!!!

try Unreal 2 with that, or NFS Underground!!! then you may use some 256MB Video card!!!

Correction on my previous post:
I have never tried that because I personally use an LCD (17" Samsung). If i could get my hans on a 20" monitor i might have tried to do it!!! Since i like my eyes i prefer 1024x768 on al least 75Hz.