Doom 3 is Playable on 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo

but just barely. Most reviews have commented that the frame-rate of Doom 3 v1.3revA with universal binary is just too low to play on a Mac mini Core Duo because of its Intel GMA 950 graphics chip set. However, we found that if we set the video to "Low Quality", screen size to 640x480 and turn off all Advanced Options, then we get a playable 26.5 frames/sec on our 1.66GHz Mac mini Core Duo with 1 GB RAM while running the demo. We played the actual game for awhile and found that it was playable, at least through the early levels.

Doing the same with the game Call of Duty (CoD) resulted in a less than satisfactory 19.6 frames/sec. Since CoD is not a universal binary, it probably would be very playable if Aspyr were to release a MacIntel version. Unfortunately, we expect that Aspyr will not do so since it is madly working away to bring Call of Duty 2 to the Mac--hopefully as a universal binary.

Apple has posted an info article on the Intel GMA 950 graphics processor used in the MacIntel minis. [Bill Fox & Dana Baggett]