Help with Doom 3

Hi all,
I have a problem running Doom 3 on my Computer.
The installation went fine and it starts up fine, but as soon as the ship lands on the airbase in the beginning of the game, it freezes up and I can not get it back. I have to press the reset button. The minimum system requirements are:

Windows(r) XP
Pentium(r) 4 1.5 GHz or Athlon(tm) XP 1500+ processor
384MB RAM
8x Speed CD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) and
latest drivers
2.2GB of uncompressed free hard disk space (plus 400MB for
Windows(r) swap file)
100% DirectX(r) 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card and latest
drivers
100% Windows(r) XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest
drivers
DirectX(r) 9.0b (included)
3D hardware Accelerator Card Required - 100% DirectX(r) 9.0b
compatible 64MB Hardware Accelerated video card and the latest drivers.
ATI(r) Radeon 8500
ATI(r) Radeon 9000
ATI(r) Radeon 9200
ATI(r) Radeon 9500
ATI(r) Radeon 9600
ATI(r) Radeon 9700
ATI(r) Radeon 9800

I have:

Windows xp with sp2
Athlon 2000+ processor
40 x cd drive
80 gig hard drive with 72 gig free
integrated sound (recognized by doom 3 )
regular mouse and keyboard
I let doom 3 install DirectX 9.0b
And I have a ATI Radeon 9200 with 128 megs on it

If I compare what I have and what is required, I see nothing wrong.
Anyone have any idea’s?
Thanks
Sven

 

Couple of things to try. Have you the latest drivers for your graphics card. Being a new game you will want the latest drivers installed, and probably the next couple of updates as well.

When the game starts, rather than let the usual start synopsis play through, hit the Tab key a few times to Tab to the "real" begining of the game and go into the settings and adjust your resolution settings down from the defaults. If this works you will need to experiment a little for the highest stable resolution.

Don't be tempted to go for the highest settings. These are unrealistic unless you have one of those "waste of money" 256MB top of the line graphics cards.
My GF4 Ti4200 and P4 2.8 1GB RAM is (reasonably) happy with 1024x768 game resolution, but no more.

I would also upgrade your DX to 9.0c as well.

 

Hi Paul,
Tanks for your quick answer.
I have set the resolution to 640 x 480 and have turned off shadow and some other options. I will try to get some newer drivers and hope that helps.
anyone else have some more info?
Sven

 

The drivers should help, but an AthlonXP 2000+ will be a little on the slow side (I'm sorry to say) for this HUNGRY game. You should also have a minimum of 512 MB RAM as well. This game will use more than 256 MB RAM. I think on my system it was above 300MB of RAM. You certainly don't want to be using virtual RAM with these types of games.

The graphics are certainly impressive but you need top end hardware. My system makes it just useable.

640x480 (MAYBE 800x600) may be about your limit given updated drivers and adequate RAM?

 

Hi Paul,
I have 512 megs of ram,
and I have driver 6.14.10.6462
the newest driver is 6.14.10.6476
almost identical. When I installed the driver, I reinstalled the game and now when I start the game, it re-boots and when I start again it hangs.
I guess the Processor is to slow, but the minimum requirement is 1500+ so I don’t understand why it will not work.
Thanks again for your help
Sven

 

How come you needed to reinstall the game after the driver update?
You may need to completely uninstall the game and reinstall it AGAIN. (yes I know, 3CD's takes a while) Reboot the PC after uninstalling before reinstallation. The minimum requirement of 1500+ is exactly that, MINIMUM, and it helps sales. A realistic minimum would probably be around the speed of your CPU. 512 MB RAM will be fine as long as nothing else is runing in the background. Defrag your system after the install, so all the game files are not spread around the disk too much.

 

Hi Paul
I did not need to re-install the game, i just did it to be shure it would work.
I will try to do it again and defrag and so on. if it still does not work, i put it back in the box and wait till i get a faster Computer. in a year or 2
Thanks again
Sven

 

No worries.
All I've got to do now is learn how to play it. All the keyboard, mouse commands and options are confusing me a lot! At least I've got a fraction of a percent through the game.