CPU Scaling Analysis, Part 1: AMD Athlon
Quake III Arena: 1024x768
One of the most widely used benchmarks is Quake III Arena. At the resolution of 1024x768, the test system is able to score blazing frame rates. Even when switching to 32 Bit and maximum details, you will not see any of those processors providing less than 75 frames/s on our test machine.
It is rather questionable if one really needs an Athlon 1200 to get more than 150 fps, as long as an Athlon 800 is pretty much fast enough as well. Let's increase the resolution.
Quake III Arena: 1600x1200
Again the results are limited by the fill rate of the graphics card. At least we found out that the CPU does not play the chief part for 3D gaming today.
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