Doom test GPU (updated)

Year of construction: May 13, 2016
Genre: Action
developer: id Software
Publishing house: Bethesda Softworks

The game developer is id Software, which laid the foundations for the first-person shooter genre and created the Deathmatch online game mode. The iconic DOOM returns as a merciless, challenging and exciting modern shooter. Relentlessly cruel demons, incredible weapons and fast-paced movements make the battles intense and memorable, both in the single-player campaign, where you will plunge into the very depths of the underworld, and in numerous multiplayer modes. The included DOOM SnapMap editor makes it easy to create your own levels, test them out, and share them with other DOOM fans around the world.

You know why you came here. The huge research complex of the United Aerospace Corporation on Mars has been captured by cruel and merciless demons who are ready to conquer our world, and only one person stands in their way. You are the lone foot soldier of the DOOM unit, the last hope of humanity. You must destroy them all.

This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.

Doom is supported by major operating systems Windows, which includes Windows 7 and Windows 8/10. The game's release on Linux and SteamOS is quite possible.

The priority and main graphics API for Doom is OpenGL. 

The heart of Doom is id Tech 6. id Tech 6- a game engine of the id Tech series, which is currently being developed by the American company id Software and which should become the successor to id Tech 5. id Tech 6 is positioned as an engine for PCs and, possibly, for eighth-generation game consoles, that is, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One. At the moment, the game Doom 4 on id Tech 6 has been announced, the engine itself is in the early stages of development. However, some characteristics and innovative features of the engine are already known. The main developers of the engine are John Carmack and John Olick.

The engine will use the innovative technology "Sparse Voxel Octree" (SVO). The geometry of the game level supported by this technology will have a voxel structure rather than a polygonal one, i.e. geometric objects will consist of voxels. Voxels will be stored in the octree. Raycasting technology will be used for lighting. One of the goals of the "SVO" technology is to be able to "load" parts of the octree into the graphics memory (video memory, memory on the video card board), going down along the branches of the tree. This means that objects on the lower branches of the octree, i.e. those objects that are located closer to the observer, will be rendered in maximum quality, with maximum detail and textures of maximum resolution. Accordingly, for distant objects that are located on higher branches of the octree, a lower quality will be used, they will be built on larger voxels. Thus, this technology is a way to control the level of detail.

Geometric objects obtained with SVO can theoretically have an unlimited number of levels of detail, moreover, these levels of detail are generated automatically. This eliminates the need to use various pseudo-1,15D techniques such as parallax mapping. However, all tests using SVO require large amounts of memory (up to several gigabytes), and John Olick stated that it is possible to compress such SVO to XNUMX bits per voxel.

In id Tech 6, only static geometry will be rendered using SVO, such as terrain, buildings, etc. Because of this, raycasting lighting will also be static. All dynamic objects such as characters, vehicles, etc. will be “built” on classic polygons and dynamically illuminated using standard rasterization techniques. Olick stated that creating dynamic objects and dynamic lighting using SVO is possible, but it will require quickly updating the rendering octree. According to Olick, dynamic lighting and geometry introduced by SVO, which will allow for the creation of variable geometry, will be present in id Tech 7.

In addition to SVO, id Tech 6 will use a more advanced megatexture technology, which was first used in the latest versions of id Tech 4. Using this technology, the entire surface of the level is covered with one texture. The developers of id Tech 6 and SVO do not focus on current hardware, but on hardware that is not yet available at the time of development. In particular, id Tech 6 focuses on CUDA, Intel Larrabee and AMD Fusion. Carmack stated that if the next generation of gaming consoles (successors to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) have hardware specifications that will satisfy the engine architecture, then perhaps id Tech 6 will work on them.

According to Olick, on a GeForce GTX 280 at 720p (1280 x 720 pixels, progressive scan), the id Tech 6 may be able to render 60 frames per second. In this case, the engine will consistently render at least 30 frames/sec. In an interview with PC Perspective, when asked what hardware would have to be and how much it would have to change to be suitable for SVO, Carmack responded with the following: “Hardware designed specifically for SVO can be much smaller, simpler and more efficient. than general purpose tools, but no one in their right mind would want to bet on our technology or want to create a specific hardware solution for a technology that no one has already used."

Unlike the Beta version, Doom has a very wide range of settings, which are located in two menus. The game also makes it possible to completely disable anti-aliasing.

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum, medium and maximum graphics quality settings. 

The difference between the settings is very clearly visible.

Anti-aliasing in the game almost completely eliminates all “roughness” of surfaces.

Doom offers us a great gif component. For the first time in many years we can say that id Tech was able to produce an outstanding picture that not only can compete with other gaming competitors, but also surpass them. It's safe to say that the developers have done an incredible job!

Next, we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware. 

Our video cards were tested at separate screen resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at high and maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Doom. AMD CrossFireX and SLI are not supported by the game. We had some problems with the internal FPS limit, which was 60 frames. Our problem was in the program  MSI Afterburner. The solution was simple - first we load the game level, and only then we launch  MSI Afterburner.

The test has been updated with new AMD Radeon Crimson Edition 16.5.2.1 drivers.

Testing at high quality settings 1920x1080 

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 7850 or GeForce GTX 750 Ti level showed acceptable FPS. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon R7 370 or GeForce GTX 760 level showed acceptable FPS. The optimal solutions would be Radeon HD 7950 or GeForce GTX 680.

Testing at high quality settings 2560x1440

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon R7 370 or GeForce GTX 760 level showed acceptable FPS. The optimal solutions will be  Radeon HD 7950 or GeForce GTX 680.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1440

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon R9 280X or GeForce GTX 780 level showed acceptable FPS. The optimal solutions will be  Radeon R9 380X or GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

Testing at high quality settings 3840x2160

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon R9 290 or GeForce GTX 970 level showed an acceptable FPS. The optimal solutions would be video cards of the Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 980 level. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2160

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 980 level showed acceptable FPS.

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory quality settings GPU

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1080 will be 3076 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1440 - 3076 MB of video memory and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 4096 MB of video memory. 

We tested processor dependence on 16 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of the video card for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

The processor performance in the game is sufficient for all models. It’s also worth noting that for the 5960X we had to disable HT, since the game apparently got confused in 16 threads...

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel% 

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 AMD% 

Doom uses up to 16 computing threads (although, as we know, it can only effectively implement 12).

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 5960X@4.6 GHz with 32 GB DDR4 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. The entire used operational memory was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

As we can see, the amount of RAM consumed in Doom Beta is within 3000 megabytes.

Testing system RAM consumption  

If you have a 6 GB system, Doom Betas consumes all 6 GB of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 6.2 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, the total memory consumption was almost 7 GB. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 7.7 gigabytes of RAM.