Jimbo... not exactly sure about Q4, but I did run Doom3 with a setup similar to yours:

Athlon XP 2600, 1024 RAM, GF4 ti4800.

I was able to run 800x600 with medium quality and get pretty decent performance.

In my (brief) experience with Q4, it seems to run similarly to D3.

Important: make sure you do at least some brief comparisons with different resolutions and detail levels. I say this because after doing some timedemos in D3, I noticed that there was no difference in frame rate when I upped the resolution from 640x480 to 800x600. It all depends on your hardware, so don't just assume that 640x480 will automatically be faster. 

Then again, I hear there are some size queens who refuse to play in anything less than 1280x768, and throw tantrums if there's no antialiasing. Fuck you, size queens.

In general I'd agree with you, but there's one important point that you might be missing:

LCD displays.

LCD monitors are made to run in a specific resolution (the one I have here is 1280x1024). If you change to any other resolution, the image is often pretty shit - much more blurry and crappy than it would be on a CRT display. Results vary depending on the game, and whether you let your monitor or display adapter do the scaling, but sometimes its pretty bad.

For this reason I run as many games as I can in 1280x1024. World of Warcraft, for instance, is particularly bad when you drop the resolution... the image is so much sharper and nicer at the monitor's native resolution.

On the other hand, obviously, I'll drop the resolution if absolutely necessary - in D3 and Q4 I just can't run 1280x1024 at an acceptable frame rate, so I have to drop the resolution. Its actually pretty decent in those games anyway... the drop in image quality isn't all that noticeable (the scenes are very dark and busy, maybe that's why).

By the way, czg... I may be a size queen, but you may be a size doofus :D

If you're running in 640 you may find you can increase the res with no performance penalty. It all depends on whether the bottleneck in your system is your video card, CPU, memory system or whatever. 

....without anti-aliasing is like fist-rape without lube - ROUGH and really unpleasant to watch. End of story.

So do you always have it on? Do you prefer a lower resolution with FSAA to a higher resolution without?

Just curious - I generally value performance more than image quality in FPS games, but I guess you'd get both with a decent video card and the right settings. 

can't you run at 640x512 - each pixel is doubled and the picture is sharp again.
Maybe the drivers or the game don't support this... Though even darkplaces support separate horizontal and vertical res. 

I ran very properly Doom3 and HL2 with AMD Athlon 2600+, ATI Radeon 9200+, 768 MB RAM, and my screen size is 1024x768 (flat 17')... No choppy image, no bugs, no problem at all...
I took a look to PC requirements for Q4, and at least will work fine for me... 8D...
BTW, I used the defaults settings all the time, both for my video card and for the games itselves..
In anyway, hoping it could help somebody about settings issue ;) 

Generally I run games with 1024x768 and 2xAA - I'd probably go for 4xAA with a better card. I never feel any urge to go higher than that res. I dunno why, maybe cos I use 1024 for my desktop.

With D3 / Q4, I run 800x600 and 2xAA, which from tests with D3 runs pretty similar to 1024 and no AA - BUT I prefer the look of the lower res and AA, I found 1024 looked a bit too harsh and rich with the D3 engine.

As for AA at any res, I DO notice it, I noticed it a long time ago in a "blind" test (i.e. I was playing a game where I thought I had AA on, and after a while the jaggies started annoying me, and I realised something had gone wrong and AA was off).

Make what you will of all that O_o 

Finished q4 yesturday. was feeling kinda sad actually... I'll bitch about 'marines' a bit later

the truth about performance: you really need fx5900 (minimum) to enjoy Q4 at 800x6, or better a gf6600 (its only 100$) and 6600gt very good fps at 1024x
It is _playable_ on ti4200, but hardly enjoyable.
And at 640 it just looks ugly -much more spacious areas than in D3, thus you dont see any detail at distance (textures get blured, geometry gets into pixelated mess) and still relatively low fps. Sack your gf4 for whatever money u can get for it and buy 6600gt

Everyone is advocating his setup (see von and czg) but I got to try q4 on several systems at work, ofcourse 6800gt is excelent, but 6600gt is smoth as well, and its ~2x cheaper

1gb ram would help too - raven abused huge textures

AA is not much of use in q3 tech games, cause most of the detail comes from textures. Better up the resolution and turn on aniso filtering - better looks for more fps.

and congrats Frib, saying the truth about oh so trendy LCDs that are bleh for gaming 

still haven't finished it (which is strange, because usually when i get a new anticipated game i do almost nothing else than playing it).

+ shotgun reload - on shell at a time (at least before the upgrade), not as unrealistically as in d3
+ the organic machinery part and everything following the disposal facility (zombies+their dungeon) ->
+ the human machinery - this is a very cool feature. i like such misanthropic thingies. human bodies (or parts) used as machines or devices of some sort, to process data, to produce energy maybe, to filter waster products, and so on. i also kept in mind one information given earlier in the game that those former humans are still aware of what happens around them, but they can't help it. there is also a place where one of those guys with severed limps is being programmed or something, everytime this rotating machine stops he panically looks at it and so on... ver nice

+- finally gibs! took quite a while for me to see some (only after i got the rg and lg)
+- the waste processing boss was kind of cool, but i found it also a little annoying for some reason i can't recall atm

[- consistancy: not that much of a problem acutally, but it's always strange to find supplies (or supply crates) in enemy territories that couldn't have been passed by marines yet. i don't care so much, but this is something that happens in other games, as well]
- i experienced some unpleasant clipping errors in the disposal facility
- some maps feel a littly boxy (at least i had the impression). they still look good because of the interior (pipes, machines) and the lighting in most cases, though. 

concerning the top post:
it works fine with a radeon 9600 (albeit pro = 256mb)....


...if the rest of the system specs are okay, too, of course. 

3ghzAtlon, 1024ram, radeon 9800pro, 1024x768 Medium quality and everything else on default, it ran quiet smoothly. The game was loads of fun from start to finish, I wasn't too fond of the vehicle parts but all and all a great game, I loved it. Can't wait till some custom single player maps come about. 

[quote]Then again, I hear there are some size queens who refuse to play in anything less than 1280x768, and throw tantrums if there's no antialiasing. Fuck you, size queens.[/quote]

You fucking mob of retards, the only people who would make such comments and complain about it are those who can not run games at a respectable resolution. Those with the hardware to run games as they should be, would not even mention crap like this. As I can see it there are only 2 reasons for this.

[bold]1.[/bold] You are morons or fagots, probably both. - Can't help you there

[bold]2.[/bold] You are loosers. - Get yourself a job and buy some decent hardware.

You call yourselves gamers? retards! If you can't run the game how it is meant to be played, don't go ragging of at those who can. ffs, I make sure that I will be able to run whatever game I am going to play at full speed, high res, and with everything maxed out. If my current machine wouldn't be able to handle an upcoming game, I buy new hardware, the latest and greatest at the time to ensure that I can run it the way I like. Simple isn't it?

Buy yourself a good monitor, nothing less than 21" will do (I have 5 of them, 2 dual 21" systems, one for game editing, gaming and one music, and one single 21"system for the internet and general shit), only fagots, morons or loosers use 17" or 19", anything less than that you are just a plain retard. Real gamers, real men use 21" and above. In conjunction with high end video cards this ensures the ability to run at high res with high refreshrate.

Not that I refuse to run at anything less than 1024x768, 1600x1200 in my case, I [bold]CHOOSE[/bold] not to, if that makes me a size queen, then so be it, at least I don't go bitching that I can't run games at high quality levels, you whining mob of pussy's.

And one more thing, just because you are all stuck in a timewarp, trapped 10 years behind the times, doesn't give you the right to whine about not being able to run the latest games. Get with the times.

Quake is dead, has been for 8 or 9 years, it's a crappy, ugly, abortion of a game which doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the games of today. Quake sucks!! Get over it you bunch of nerdified fags.

L8R, fagots, morons and loosers

sizequeen, and proud of it! 

what kind of a fagot board is this 

Then again, I hear there are some size queens who refuse to play in anything less than 1280x768, and throw tantrums if there's no antialiasing. Fuck you, size queens.

You fucking mob of retards, the only people who would make such comments and complain about it are those who can not run games at a respectable resolution. Those with the hardware to run games as they should be, would not even mention crap like this. As I can see it there are only 2 reasons for this.

1. You are morons or fagots, probably both. - Can't help you there

2. You are loosers. - Get yourself a job and buy some decent hardware.

You call yourselves gamers? retards! If you can't run the game how it is meant to be played, don't go ragging of at those who can. ffs, I make sure that I will be able to run whatever game I am going to play at full speed, high res, and with everything maxed out. If my current machine wouldn't be able to handle an upcoming game, I buy new hardware, the latest and greatest at the time to ensure that I can run it the way I like. Simple isn't it?

Buy yourself a good monitor, nothing less than 21" will do (I have 5 of them, 2 dual 21" systems, one for game editing, gaming and one music, and one single 21"system for the internet and general shit), only fagots, morons or loosers use 17" or 19", anything less than that you are just a plain retard. Real gamers, real men use 21" and above. In conjunction with high end video cards this ensures the ability to run at high res with high refreshrate.

Not that I refuse to run at anything less than 1024x768, 1600x1200 in my case, I [bold]CHOOSE[/bold] not to, if that makes me a size queen, then so be it, at least I don't go bitching that I can't run games at high quality levels, you whining mob of pussy's.

And one more thing, just because you are all stuck in a timewarp, trapped 10 years behind the times, doesn't give you the right to whine about not being able to run the latest games. Get with the times.

Quake is dead, has been for 8 or 9 years, it's a crappy, ugly, abortion of a game which doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the games of today. Quake sucks!! Get over it you bunch of nerdified fags.

L8R, fagots, morons and loosers

sizequeen, and proud of it! 

It was kind of boring, repetitive, and predictable.

(And of course you still messed up the tags after two tries at it, and your spelling and grammar ignorance make Baby Jesus cry.)

I'll give you 4 out of 10, just for sheer effort. 

http://www.fuzzyslogic.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core:DownloadItem&g2_itemId=5504&g2_serialNumber=2&g2_GALLERYSID=abf68e7ba61cb74de8f345ef5915619a 

Yesturday at tf we were discussing q4 monsters...
While I think they are not too exciting, being mostly hummies, they are quite good still.

My fave being the Harvester (huge red spider) - impressive somewhat frightening even and reminds of war of the worlds and some anime a bit.
Mini makron (smaller spider-like) is nice looking as well. Out of himanoids the gunner (ng/gren guy) dude and ... 'zombies' ( I like how they crawl from the barrels and try to move even w/o legs).
The "most rediculous" award goes to grunt aka 'iron monkey' - it doesnt fit witht the rest of monster design really. 

http://i.somethingawful.com/jeffk/hotgamez2005/imgages/quake4.jpg 

 

WTF !! How can this screenshot colors be so ugly ?? 

whoever is responisble for the nexus core arena fight (on skill 2) should be dismissed at once! this really was the most annoying thing i've played for a VERY long time. the only reason i didn't cheat was because i had no idea how to bring down the console (duh).
in retrospecive it probably wasn't that hard, but as i played it those stupid flying homing-missles shooting fatsos sucked big time - two would have been fine, four were shit. i don't know how long it took me to get past this area, but i guess some 30 tries at least...

compared to that (and in general, too) the final fight was ridicously easy. this fact actually also reminded me of q2, where the player not only had the bfg and lots of ammo, but also quads and pents en masse, so the macron became a joke.
the final fight should always be the ultimate challenge, hard but at the same time not annoying. unfortunately, very few newer games manage to fulfill this principle.

anyway, despite all the nitpicks i mentioned, i really enjoyed playing q4 - great graphics, details, sounds, awesome-looking monsters (and nice porting from q2), cool environments, great overall atmosphere -> excellent game!

(now, i only hope nightmare is not as bleh as in doom3...) 

what nexus core, remind me?

yeha final was too easy, especially the makaron itself - ~10 seconds! 

near the end - in the last map before the finale.
hall with some columns, four runner-martial-arts-strogg, four flying fatsos, two spiders... remember? 

I don't remember fighting the Makron...I am pretty sure that after I destroyed that big brain thing it went straight into the ending cinematic.

I either have a faulty memory or somehow skipped the entire Makron fight! 

Makron is before the Brain in the same arena 

yeah, that was actually challenging bit, but I liked it. Reminded me of the typical q1 custom sp finale.
several 'flying fatsos' at once are hard - the blue rocket kills in one hit and has huge splash