D3HDP - DooM 3 Essential HD Pack mod (2025)

Update! I managed to make Doom 3 run ultra smoothly (I'm on 8 missions now and there are no lags). As I suspected, the problem wasn't in my weak computer (the game doesn't even use 50% of the GTX 960). I did a few things (new Windows installation, etc.) - to know for sure what was the cause.

I'll describe what I did - maybe it will be useful to others.

First of all, in the previous post I forgot about the most important thing. The animation drops were ALWAYS when I opened the door. Each opened door (new) = FPS drop for literally a second, as if something had to load. It turned out that the CPU had 85-95% usage on ONE core (I looked at it wrong earlier). So the 3770 has 4 physical cores and Doom 3 was running on ONLY ONE - at 85-95% (the other cores had a few %).

So:

1. I installed dhewm3 1.5.4 and I run the game through it (now Doom 3 runs on TWO cores, equally).
2. In the dhewm3 settings I turned off "Soft Particles".
3. In the nVidia panel I changed "power management - full performance" and "triple buffering - enable".
4. In RTSS I set the frame limit for dhewm3 to 60.
5. MOST IMPORTANTLY I turn off VSync in Doom 3 (every time I run the game). I don't know why, but when VSync is on the CPU usage is 85-95% (on core no. 2 and 4). When VSync is off the CPU usage is 30-40% (on core no. 2 and 4).

This solved the problem with the second drops. Right now I have it set to:

1080p + AA x4 + your mod. Everything works great.

CPU usage - 30-40% (on core no. 2 and 4)
GPU usage - 30-40%
Windows 10

Hi! I installed your mod and I have performance issues.

There are FPS drops to 35-40 from 60. They last less than a second, but the image is not smooth. They are only when I rotate the camera. The game takes 4GB of VRAM (my card has 4GB VRAM) and I am 99% sure that this is the cause (it also takes 5GB of RAM from my 8GB RAM).

My GPU (GTX 960) usage during drops is max 40-50%, my CPU similarly (i7 3770) 60-70% on one core (and 20-30% on others). I measured with MSI Afterburner. Even when I set the resolution to 640x480 and AA to 0x, the drops are identical. So the problem is with full VRAM.

Is there anything I can reduce in your autoexec file to reduce VRAM usage (and the game was super smooth), while maintaining ultra graphics?

Low-end settings file (autoexec) everything works fine, but the graphics are much worse (medium textures). And as I said, the problem is VRAM, not computer performance.

I would be grateful for your help. Sorry for my English.