During the two time-demo runs of Quake 3 Arena, we discovered that the Shuttle system with the Intel platform and GeForce 4 graphics had the best frame rate. The only board to beat the Intel Shuttle was the Gigabyte with identical hardware, which squeaked by with fewer than two frames per second more.

We were flabbergasted by the onboard graphics on the AMD system (SN41G2) in both tests, which hammered out 250 and 120 frames per second. The onboard graphics on the Intel 845 GE chipset look positively antiquated in comparison, with a paltry 140 and 50 frames per second, and a much poorer display quality to boot. That said, however, the two mini systems were neck-and-neck with their ATX counterparts.