The up and coming release of Doom 3 is easily one of the most anticipated events in the entire history of the personal computer, potentially equaled in recent years only by AMD's upcoming Athlon 64 launch and, when compared to the sum total of human history, by the Second Coming. For almost two years every video card that's been launched has been evaluated by its future standard, first all-but invisibly, and then, as the appointed day drew nearer, with increasing fervor. John Carmack may have done more damage to NVIDIA's low-end budget video lineup then the entire tech recession of the past three years combined when he uttered the (paraphrased) sentence: "Do not buy a GeForce4 MX to play Doom 3." He might as well have said: "Do not buy, consider, or look sidewise at a GeForce4 MX, period, for any reason."

For better or worse, Carmack is one of the rare individuals in the industry who's words are both heeded and respected. When Gates, Ellison, McNealy, or Jobs open their mouths people take heed, but the insults and detractions tend to fly just as quickly as the compliments and support. The closest person I can think of to compare to Carmack would seem to be Linus Torvalds, who, like Carmack, stays out of the political battles fought throughout the IT world and seems dedicated to building a better kernel to the exclusion of much else. Perhaps the reason people seem to listen to Carmack is precisely because he doesn’t seem politically vested in every sentence that comes out of his mouth.

This, however, is a bit off-topic, even for the INQ. The point is, Carmack said: "Don't buy" and people didn't. Now, with the launch of the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra last week we've actually gotten to see our most modern video cards in action and the results are a bit sobering. It looks like Doom 3 is going to be the game that finally shatters the hardware vs. 3D engine supremacy that's been the case for years, and not even the highest-end cards available may be able to run it in 1600x1200x32 with all the eye candy turned on and AA / AF tossed in to boot. That right there, if you stop and think about it, is a turn-around from what we're used to seeing these days. Making matters worse, the game prefers NVIDIA video cards over ATI cards so much at this point it's not even funny. ATI had best hope that the reason the GF FX series cleans the Radeon's clock so brutally is because of a driver error, because if it isn't NVIDIA is going to gain a massive benefit from gamers looking to upgrade for the game.

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