Does anyone here have any insight into graphics card hardware for Doom3?

I have a budget of about 100-120GBP for a new graphics card, my sole intention is to get a better framerate and display quality over my current GeForce MX420 64MB card.

In various places where I've been reading, mention has been made of Doom3's potential to exploit video memory. As a result, I don't know whether to go for a slower card with more video memory or a faster card with less.

The cards I've been looking at are based upon the nVidia 5700LE (256MB) and nVidia 5900XT (128MB) chipsets.

Can anyone offer any insight into the potential display quality versus framerate tradeoffs between these two cards? Also, perhaps I'm barking completely up the wrong tree here; considering my budget, what other card(s) should I be looking at? Faint memories of ATI owners and their card's driver problems are steering me away from that brand but perhaps I should consider those too?

[I know that perhaps there are probably a dozen other places where I should take this post but I respect the people and their knowledge on this board more than other places.]

i don't like either gf card youre selecting. they're both cutting performance
go with either the 5700 ultra or a 5900 non-xt. not sure what the pricing is on those, though
xt & le mean bad stuff in nvidia

If I had it to do over again, I'd buy an ATI card instead of an Nvidia card.

I finally got a set of Nvidia drivers that didn't have the "slow smoke" bug and had fast performance, but they crash in Far Cry and Halo. In order to run either of those games, I have to rewind to older drivers that slow down with smoke effects.

I don't understand why Nvidia can't put out a set of drivers that simply works for everything. I thought that was the whole point of drivers.

Not that it helps you much, but I've only got a GeForce FX 5600 128MB and it runs Doom III at 800x600, Medium Qualtiy, with everything but AA turned on at a very decent framerate.

That sounds promising. Do you have any timedemo framerate scores that you can share?

(In case you didn't know this already; they are accessible via Ctrl+Alt+` to get the console, then [E.g.] "timedemo demo1")

Haven't run a timedemo yet. I'll try that when I'm at home.

Well, there goes my pre-conceived notions about ATI's drivers being bad then!

The only games I really have on the cards ATM are Eve (probably irrelevant) and more importantly Doom3. So, as long as Doom3 runs well I pretty much don't care

Have you taken any timedemo scores yet and in any event, what nVidia card are you running there?

Timedemo demo1 @ 800x600, MQ = 27.7 FPS

I did a couple of timedemo demo1's last night, at "high" detail with no antialiasing:

1280 x 1024 = 22.2 FPS with several visible pauses during playback.
1024 x 768 = 30.9 FPS with no pauses during playback.

Computer specs are 3.2ghz P4, ASUS motherboard, a gig of fast DDR RAM, and a GeForce FX 5900 with 256 megs of video RAM.

The game was playable at 1280 x 1024, just not comfortably. The lower frame rate was enough to give me a headache. But oh my goodness it looked gorgeous.

Here soon, nVidia should have their GeForce 6600 out with *gasp* no need for a massive power supply. List price will be $199. I know that is out of your price range by a bit, but honestly it will probably be the best card for the money for Doom 3.

ATI isn't doing well with Doom 3 for some reason. Though, the tables will be turned with Half Life 2, making it a difficult decision for any gamer. Personally, I'm still a fan of ATI for supporting even the highest end cards in Small Form Factor macine. One slot and low power requirements are mandatory in this space.

Keep in mind that Doom3 timedemos don't do any AI or physics...so if you're trying to decide if CPU/Memory is going to help more than a new card, the timedemo is an awful way to find out.