Medium Quality
We'll kick things off with Medium Quality mode where all 17 of our cards can play, at least up to 1024x768. I've presented scores with both bar and line graphs, so I'll hold off commenting until the bottom of the page.

After years of ridicule, the Dustbuster is finally vindicated in DOOM 3—not that the card's obscenely loud cooler will let you enjoy the game's audio content. The single-slot GeForce FX 5900 XT is quieter, cooler, and nearly as fast. Heck, it even beats out the venerable Radeon 9700 Pro.

After the 9700 Pro, the cards really start to bunch up, with the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, Radeon 9500 Pro, and Radeon 9600 XT sharing similar scores. The Radeon 9600 Pro and GeForce4 Ti 4600 aren't far off the pace, though. Curiously, the two perform almost identically here.

Scores for our slower cards are considerably more varied, with the classic GeForce Ti 4200 leading the way. The GeForce FX 5200 Ultra and Radeon 9550 aren't too far behind, although I wouldn't want to play at resolutions above 800x600.

Moving along, the vanilla GeForce FX 5200 manages to edge out ATI's Radeon 8500 series cards and the Radeon 9000 Pro, which in turn give Parhelia a healthy beating. I was impressed that Parhelia actually ran DOOM 3 without issue, but 22.6 frames per second at 640x480 is hardly playable.