Doom3 As a Video Card Benchmark

Ever since Doom3 made it to the store shelves, I’ve used it as a test platform.  The opening sequence gives you some idea of how well the operating system, video driver, and video card handle a rather resource intensive game.  I also test with Half Life 2.  I tested the HP nc8000 when we got them.  The Mobile Radeon 9600 does a decent enough job to play the game at a good screen resolution with full shading and such.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T60 and my Dell Latitude D820 also do a great job.  However, installs are a pain in the rear.  What is up with the DVD drives that come in laptops these days?  I had problems with the Doom 3 Disk 2 in both the T60 and D820.  Have the laptop makers cut corners and the drives aren’t up to spec or what?  I ended up installing from my external Sony DRX-710UL.

Anyway, time to dig around on the Doom3 sites and see how to use wide screen formats for the game.  If someone has a link to a FAQ on the subject, let me know.  I’d love to save some time.  Also, if you have any other recommended config file settings, let me know about those, too.  It’s been so long since I tweaked my home gaming machine, I forgot which settings I tweaked for screen tearing and better fluid movement.  Thanks.