THIS WEEK IS ALL about Doom 3 even though you still can't get it here in Vienna, former capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And when it does come out here and in Germany it will be a bloodless version because this part of Europe has renounced blood and guts.
Some interesting things have happened. First our friends at Anadtech proved that the Athlon 64 marchitecture beats the hell out of Intel's Pentium 4. It was shocking to see that 3000+ 512 KB cache AMD chip is actually just one frame slower then 3.4 Exscream Edition CPU. The price difference is $830 as EE costs $988 while a 3000+ costs $158, according to Pricewatch. All other Athlon socket 754 3400+, socket 939 3500+, 3800+, FX51 and FX53 all 939 are faster than EE 3.4.
At the same time, ATI made its drivers available and you can check and download them
here. Those drivers won't get the WHQL imprimatur until the middle of September.
Knowing how Nvidia thinks, it will rapidly jump to the conclusion that Nforce 3, Athlon and NV40/45 are the best choice for Doom III. We cannot blame them, even though we know that the Via K8 chipset would still do well in and that a Pentium 4 with ATI is still a good choice.
Doom III is being touted as a hardware booster and a seller of computers. Half Life II may arrive in September. But it would be nice if people could buy a Pentium or an Athlon or an ATI or an Nvidia card and know that either game will run well on the not-so-cheap hardware we're expected to buy.
Source:
The INQ!
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