Doom 3 Timedemo Download Youtube
How to benchmark Doom 3 with timedemos Now you have an understanding of frame rates and the importance behind them, we are ready to learn how to benchmark Doom 3 on your system with the built-in timedemo feature. All about timedemos A timedemo is a way of comparing frame rates from point A to point B in any given game which includes a timedemo feature.
This is the Doom shareware timedemo 3 running in Magic Dosbox on my Galaxy S7 Edge G935F (Exynos). This benchmark is great for testing the raw cpu.
Some games come with pre-recorded timedemos from the game developer which you can use (Doom 3 comes with a timedemo called demo1.demo which is quite good) or you can record your own to compare performance from one system to another. The method of creating your own timedemo rather than using a popular publicly available one can be considered a more reliable method as in the past some companies have been known to optimize their drivers for certain timedemos which some consider cheating.
The timedemos job is to measure the amount of time it takes to render a certain amount of frames - usually at least 3000 frames in total to give a fair idea of system performance - preferably more though. The quicker the timedemo completes, the quicker the system, as it was able to render the most amounts of frames per second. As a rule of thumb, the frames per second in a timedemo are averaged out over the entire demo to give an overall idea of performance. When creating a timedemo, the idea is to create a demo which covers all aspects of game play - running around, jumping, crouching, ducking, shooting bad guys and so on - simulate what you would do, as if you were actually playing the game. This is the best way to create a realistic timedemo which will provide accurate results - for example, it would be no good walking around in a circle inactive as a game like Doom 3 is not usually like this in reality when you are playing through the levels. You usually engage in zombie shooting which is quite intensive and puts stress on the entire system, mostly the CPU, memory and graphics card. Creating a timedemo Creating a timedemo is quite easy in Doom 3 and is basically the same as creating one in Quake 3 and some other games by ID Software - even the console looks just about the same.
Before we get to the timedemo recording, we need to modify the DoomConfig.cfg file to make for easier usage a little down the track. First of all you will need to open the DoomConfig.cfg file in notepad or something similar, the file is located in your /base/ root folder - for example: C: Doom 3 base DoomConfig.cfg. Once you have the DoomConfig.cfg file open, you will need to add the following two commands: bind ',' 'recorddemo' bind '.' 'stoprecording' These commands tell Doom 3 to begin recording a timedemo when ',' key is pushed and to stop recording when the '.'
Key is pushed - Trust me, this method is much easier than pulling down and console and typing in the commands each time. As far as I know, there is no limit to the size of the timedemo you create but be aware a 3 minute timedemo creates a 150MB or thereabout file in your Doom 3 demos folder. Make sure you have enough hard drive space if you want to create super long timedemos. If for whatever reason you want to type in the commands manually, you'll need to pull down the console to do so by pressing CTRL + ALT +. If this is too much work for you, you can avoid this by adding the following command to the DoomConfig.cfg file: seta comallowConsole 1 This command tells Doom 3 to allow you to access the console by just pressing instead of the rest of the keys like by default. IMPORTANT: You'll find a complete set of Doom 3 console commands and cheats in our Gaming forum,.
Doom 3 Timedemo
Now we are ready to create the actual timedemo. Load up Doom 3 and fire up a single player level - any will do. When you feel you are at a good point to begin recording your timedemo, press the ',' key once only - the timedemo is now recording. Move around actively and shot bad guys and after period of about 2 or 3 minutes (or more if you like) and then press the '.'
Key to stop the timedemo from recording. Now to check that the demo actually was recorded, pull down the console and you should see a message saying ' stopped recoding demos/demo001.demo' - your timedemo is now complete and ready to be used, as you can see in the screenshot below. As you can see from the screenshot above, our custom timedemo rendered a total of 5456 frames in 44.2 seconds which gave us an average FPS score of 123.6 frames per second. If you want to see the frame rate as the timedemo runs, enable the Doom 3 FPS counter by pulling down the console and typing ' comshowfps 1' - If you want to disable the FPS counter in the future, just type in ' comshowfps 0' (without the speech marks each time).
It is very important to keep in mind that when you are running a timedemo your system is actually doing a little less work than it would if you were actually playing the game. When you record a timedemo it also records the work the CPU and graphics card would normally do in actual game play - such as AI. This means when you run a timedemo your system (read: CPU) is not being as stressed as much as it would but luckily this doesn't affect the scores too much - it's just good to keep in mind. We also noted that when you run timedemos, the animated screens in the game are not present (as you can see in the screenshot below).
Benchmarking with FRAPS (more precision) We've covered the basics of benchmarking Doom 3 with the built-in timedemo feature and the issues to watch out for but we can go one set further and use a very handy and popular Australian made program called FRAPS (download it ) to measure system performance. FRAPS is a popular program used by ATI and nVidia and many gamers around the world to measure in detail the FPS of both DX and OpenGL games which don't have a timedemo feature. You can also capture screenshots and record a video of your game play to help improve your skills or just show your friends. In our case, we'll be using FRAPS to provide a more precise idea of benchmarking with Doom 3 - in particular: minimum, maximum and average FPS scores. The built-in Doom 3 timedemo feature only gives you an average FPS score at the end. FRAPS is able to provide a whole bunch of information on the timedemo run.
Doom 3 Demo
It's important we know the minimum and maximum FPS scores because even if you have an average FPS of say 50, you don't want to have too many areas where the FPS drops into the single digit range as it will make the game less enjoyable. Before we get onto using FRAPS, it's important to note that you will still need to create a timedemo when using FRAPS. If not, you will be capped at 60 FPS and the results will not provide what we are looking for to the fullest extent. Once you have downloaded and installed FRAPS, open the program and click on the FPS tab at the top - this is the section we are most interested in today. By default, you press F11 in game to let FRAPS know that you want to begin testing.
Doom 3 Video
Once you press F11 the testing will begin and once you are finished you need to hit F11 again to stop it. You'll also want to click on the ' Save detailed benchmark statistics' tick box to enable minimum and maximum FPS scores, as you can see below. You can enable the FPS overlay display counter which will display in a yellow font in any corner of the screen you choose. This is not as important as you can just enable the Doom 3 FPS counter by pulling down the console and typing ' comshowfps 1' - If you want to disable the FPS counter, just type in ' comshowfps 0', without the speech marks each time. Once the timedemo is finished, locate the folder where you installed FRAPS and open the benchmarks folder. This folder contains all of your detailed benchmark results.