The answer is pretty simple: at this stage with current drivers and version of the game NVIDIA's GeForce 6800-series is the best thing you can buy for Doom III. ATI's RADEON X800-series also delivers nice performance and astonishing gameplay, but based on the benchmark numbers we have to say that it is much behind the rival. Older-generation hardware will hardly be a good choice for Doom III, however, keep in mind that we tested with "high quality" settings set, while "medium quality" may offer higher performance, but with a bit compromised image quality.

To tell you the truth, even on a rather mainstream machine you are going to experience the game in all its glory. For instance, we tried to run the Doom III on a machine powered by Intel Pentium 2 .40GHz processor, i875P-based mainboard, 1GB of dual-channel PC3200 memory, ATI RADEON X800 PRO graphics card and SB Live! audio card and the game performed astonishingly well with quality settings set to "high" and anisotropic filtering 16x activated from the drivers.

It is interesting to note that some of the graphics cards working at high (but still stock!) frequencies produced artifacts and even BSODs in Doom III. So far we have experienced only one such issue with a top-of-of-the-range contemporary graphics card from a manufacturer that we do not name at this time.