necros, i think thats actually a really good idea, it would build tension.

its certainly worth a one-off try at. 

I've already done that 

's truth. 

didn't remember. x.x 

i am back from hawaii and i want to eat your souls et al 

Hawai ?? Really ?? Are you a surfer / windsurfer / kitesurfer to haves holiday in Hawai ?? I'm so jalous not to spend my holiday there... grrrr... i hate you... ;-) 

... I'm so jalous just because it's my dream to ride Hawaian windsurf spot... not more... 

You've just been on holiday for three weeks - don't get greedy ;) 

You are right, I don't have to be greedy.... but Hawai is THE ultimate destination for a respectable windsurfer... and for sure, when I will be a "grown-ups", I will have a trip to Hawai !! ... just hoping I will win enough money to pay the travell... grrrr... 

I haven't managed a holiday in three years. 

Kinn, I couldn't imagine any second that a man can work for a so long time without having holidays !! So, I agree: I can consider myself lucky compared to you... But you know: there is a life after job... Holidays never kill somebody... just think about it... 

I have the game woohoo!!

Now, I want to know how to prepare my system for it. What I'm aiming for is 1024x768, steady 30 FPS, and then the highest settings I can have, preferably 2xAA, and no bloody graphical glitches.

System is:

P4 2.8 GHZ
1 GB Ram
Radeon 9800Pro 256 meg
Windows XP

Everything generally working fine.

Are there any tweaks, tips, tricks, driver updates, setting changes etc etc that I should do/change to get the best out of D3?? 

you should be fine, 2xAA may be slow, but you'll most likely won't need it. 

Get the latest DX and drivers for your video card. For cutting edge software, that's pretty standard procedure. Beyond that, I dunno. 

seta image_useCache "1"

seta image_cacheMegs "256" <--- should be 1/4th your total memory

seta image_cacheMinK "20480"

Without the useCache value set to 1, the cacheMegs variable does nothing. Also, without changing the cacheMinK value, setting useCache to "1" will crash the game on loading.

Your setup is pretty similar to mine, and the game runs good for me. There are a shitload of supposed tweaks floating around out there and most of them are bullshit (including one brilliant suggestion to un-pak all the files so they can be read faster--all that does is make loading levels take about four times as long), and the ones that aren't bullshit generally make the game look like various varieties of ass.

The above settings allow me to knock resolution up one more notch, and smoothed out loading of new areas a bit. 

Also make sure you grab the newest Catalyst drivers for your ATi card. There is a set of beta 4.9 cats that give about 1-5 fps boost. Nothing that much but worth a look perhaps. Personally I think the only reason ATi has released those drivers is to show they haven't given up on the OpenGL side of stuff which they admittedly haven't worked on in over a year. Given most new titles use DirectX it has never been much of an issue for ATi till Doom3.

PJW: I read that somewhere and Robert Duffy himself was watchin the thread and basically told the guy he was completely incorrect and was asking where he came up with "facts" he used to justify the "tweak". 

clah is there some evil netsplit atm or is there any other reason I'm alone in #tf? 

#tf is full of scumbags again 

They released the Offical 4.8 Cats today, appearantly they have the 4.9 Doom3 improvements in them. ATi claims up to 12% improvement on their X800 series cards. For the 9800 series expect a smaller increase, but an increase. 

What about avoiding the glitches I've heard of (wasn't it sort of red and white sparkles people were having problems with)?? 

The graphical artifacts you speak of are usually on 9800Pros that have been overclocked. I've read some reports that even normally clocked Pros create this issues and you must sometimes even underclock your card. Unfortantly if you are getting these errors there isn't much you can do. These new drivers I suspect would not cause any errors if you don't have any already. JC has said a few times that overclocking graphics cards will create artifacts has his rendering paths use sections of pipelines and chips that are often not used. As long as you don't have the specks now tho Sham, I suspect you'll be fine with the new 4.8 Cats. 

The problem isn't directly about overclocking and is just good old fashioned too much heat. The 4.8/4.9b drivers do a better job of balancing the load, but just opening up your case will probably be enough. 

I run Doom 3 on a-
P4 3Ghz
1GB RAM
ATI 128MB 9800 Pro

I run it at 1024x768 at High Detail.. no AA as its a bit slow. But timedemo gets me about 47fps. 

I downloaded the Doom 3 E3 demo two years and got approximately 33bps (Bees Per Second). 

the E3 demo was alpha, it doesn't reflect the final product. I a much lower framerate is that than I did in the final game.