Doom 3 System Reqs

[Lord FlatHead]

mmnpsrsoskl said:

Wonder how well it would run DooM III? :P

It probably wouldn't run at all.

[Postal]

Alientank hasn't e-mailed AMD, and probably not Intel either, since his information seems decidedly mixed in authenticity (sorry to sound harsh, but you've got to check facts).

AMD's 8th-generation CPU technology, which is going into the Opteron and next-generation Athlon (beyond the upcoming final updates to the 32-bit-only version), is a 32-bit/64-bit hybrid. It's referred to as an x86-64 technology since it's actually an x86 processor design with 64-bit extensions. That means that the ability to handle 32-bit operations is NATIVE, not emulated, since the normal 32-bit functions are still there. You could easily run Doom 3 on an Opteron or 64-bit Athlon.

The Itanium and Itanium 2 from Intel, on the other hand, are only capable of 64-bit functions natively and use an architecture called IA64. IA64 isn't compatible with x86-64, and that means that code written in 64-bit for AMD's chips won't work for Intel's. For example, Windows XP 64-bit currently only runs on Itaniums, since that version of XP was coded for IA64 chips. In that version of Windows XP any 32-bit apps have to run in an emulation mode which is, as you might have guessed, much slower (it's more akin to a Pentium 3, and not a high-end one either). Therefore, with Intel's current designs, Doom 3 would have to be recompiled and retested for the Itanium series.

Of course, Intel also doesn't intend to brand the Itanium 2 (and definitely not the original Itanium) as a "consumer" chip. It's there for servers and apps that depend on 64-bit precision. The AMD design is still expected to be a consumer chip from day one; it just happens to have 64-bit abilities.

[Zaldron]

A nice VC++ compiler spawned from Intel's support would rock. Each game would come with both 32 bits and 64 bits gamecode, while the media assets would stay the same for both platforms.

[Postal]

In a nice instance of synchronicity, a German site seems to have run tests on an AMD "Clawhammer" (an early test version of what will become the 64-bit Athlon/Opteron):

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/937/1.html

If that site is correct, and it certainly looks like that's the case, then Intel will have its work cut out for it in improving the Pentium 4. The specs seem to show that the Clawhammer is literally twice as efficient, clock-per-clock (an 800 MHz example being equal to a Pentium 4 at 1.6 GHz), and that's assuming that other improvements don't come in final production. For reference, my Athlon XP 1800+ is actually clocked at 1.53 GHz; that's only really a 17% efficiency improvement (although AMD has been known to be a bit pessimistic with their numbers).

I can picture myself with a 1.6 GHz, 64-bit Athlon that runs Doom 3 astoundingly well (when accompanied by a cutting-edge video card, of course). It may end up that Intel, for once, has to add support for AMD features to get business. :)