Doom 3 is one of the heaviest games available today. As we’ve done on other programs, we ran this game at three resolutions: 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 and 1600x1200x32. This game allows several image quality levels and we’ve done our benchmarking on two levels, low and high. We ran demo1 four times and wrote the obtained number of frames per second. The first result we discarded at once, since it is far inferior than the other results. This happens because at the first time we run the demo the game must load all textures to video memory, fact that doesn’t happen from the second time we run the demo on. From the three results left, we consider as our official result the middle result, i.e. we discard the highest and the lowest values. Curiously almost all times the values obtained at the second round on were the same.

A very important detail that we must mention is that Doom 3 has an internal FPS lock: it is only capable of generating 60 frames per second, even if your board is able to produce more frames per second than that. This is done in order to make the game to have the same "playability" sensation independently from the video card installed on the PC. This lock, however, is disabled in the game benchmarking mode.

For further details on how to measure 3D performance with Doom 3, read our tutorial on this subject.

At a resolution of 1024x768 without any image quality enhancement, Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was faster than all the other cards tested: it was 11.07% faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra from XFX, 11.58% faster than Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition from ATI, 21.02% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from Leadtek, 21.17% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from nVidia, 28.19% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Sapphire, 28.70% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Gigabyte, 29.39% faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra from nVidia, 80.86% faster than GeForce FX 5950 Ultra from Gigabyte and 82.55% faster than Radeon 9800 XT from ATI.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 without any image quality enhancement, Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was 12.55% faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra from nVidia, 17.13% faster than Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition from ATI, 36.50% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from Leadtek, 37.62% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from nVidia, 52.75% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Sapphire, 53.59% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Gigabyte, 132.96% faster than GeForce FX 5950 Ultra from Gigabyte and 142.44% faster than Radeon 9800 XT from ATI.

GeForce 6800 Ultra from XFX achieved almost the same performance as Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 without any image quality enhancement, Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was 17.42% faster than Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition from ATI, 44.10% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from Leadtek, 44.10% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from nVidia, 62.16% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Sapphire, 63.38% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Gigabyte, 149.81% faster than GeForce FX 5950 Ultra from Gigabyte and 176.50% faster than Radeon 9800 XT from ATI.

Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was beaten by both GeForce 6800 Ultra from XFX and GeForce 6800 Ultra from nVidia, that were 15.92% and 4.95%, respectively, faster.

At a resolution of 1024x768 enabling image quality enhancements, Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was faster than all the other cards tested: it was 12.65% faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra from XFX, 14.68% faster than Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition from ATI, 24.74% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from nVidia,  25.23% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from Leadtek, 26.90% faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra from nVidia, 36.93% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Sapphire, 37.72% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Gigabyte, 102.34% faster than Radeon 9800 XT from ATI and 116.10% faster than GeForce FX 5950 Ultra from Gigabyte.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 enabling image quality enhancements, Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was 12.45% faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra from nVidia, 19.82% faster than Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition from ATI, 39.83% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from Leadtek, 40.31% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from nVidia, 60.48% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Sapphire, 61.77% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Gigabyte, 152.04% faster than Radeon 9800 XT from ATI and 161.04% faster than GeForce FX 5950 Ultra from Gigabyte.

GeForce 6800 Ultra from XFX and Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI achieved practically the same performance.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 enabling image quality enhancements, Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was 20.23% faster than Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition from ATI, 45.79% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from Leadtek, 45.79% faster than GeForce 6600 GT AGP from nVidia, 66.84% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Sapphire, 67.74% faster than Radeon X800 Pro from Gigabyte, 171.30% faster than GeForce FX 5950 Ultra from Gigabyte and 181.08% faster than Radeon 9800 XT from ATI.

GeForce 6800 Ultra from nVidia Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI achieved practically the same performance..

Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition from ATI was beaten by GeForce 6800 Ultra from XFX, that was 10.42% faster.