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Mac speed testing site Bare Feats has taken the recent release of Quake III Arena 1.30 and put it through the wringer on a dual 800 G4, using frames per second as their benchmark. The main aim of this testing was to see if this latest update took advantage of a Mac's multiprocessing under OS X, particularly after the new 10.1 update.

Bare Feats used a variety of environments and settings in testing, running Q3 through OS 10.1, 10, and 9.2 with both a GeForce 2 and 3. The two main resolutions/settings used were 640x480 at "fastest" settings and 1024x768 at "max settings," both in 32 bit. Commonly used Q3 tweaks "s_chunksize 2048" and "s_mixahead .07, cg_scoreplums 0" were also applied in specific environments.

As one might expect, the testing goes pretty much the way one would expect, with the GeForce 3 and 10.1 clocking the highest speeds. What people might -not- be expecting are the insanely huge fps numbers that are now being racked up: 184 fps at 640x480 and 125 fps at 1024x480 with the optimal 10.1/GeForce 3 setup. It looks like Mac users have finally broken that elusive 100+ mark that PC users typically take for granted. However, it did take a dual-processor machine and an SMP-enabled game to do it.

In an additional comparison test, a Pentium 4 1.6Ghz machine and a dual 533 G4, both with GeForce 3s, were also tested and compared to the original tests garnered from the dual 800. At 640x480, the dual 800 and the P4 are shown to run neck and neck, both scoring 184 fps. At 1024x768, the P4 edges out the dual 800, scoring 145 fps vs. 125 fps.

Those interested in the full battery of test results should check out Bare Feats, which has graphical charts that are much easier to read. By most accounts, it appears that Graeme Devine has done an excellent job with this latest incarnation of Quake III. Let's hope we continue to see this trend of excellence in future Mac OS X titles from id Software.

Bare Feats - Quake III 1.30 on a Dual 800

Mac Game Files - Quake III 1.30

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