What A Difference Three Years Makes
I remember doing everything possible when Quake III Arena came out to boost performance on my system. My TNT2 and Celeron 466 were pushed to the limit to produce a (then) fairly respectable 39fps at a resolution of 800x600 and medium detail settings (16-bit colour of course. 32-bit produced a slide show). Okay, things got a bit jerky during heavy action, but it was very playable. Today I booted up Q3A for the first time on my new system. At 1600x1200 resolution with maximum detail settings the framerate was locked at 90fps. That was nice, but seemed strange until I remembered Q3’s sneaky maxfps setting. I checked, and sure enough it was set at 85. I pushed the limit out to 200, and now the framerate sits around 160fps average (heavy action taken into account).
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s an increase in pixel and polygon pushing of at least a factor of 30 ( {1600x1200 / 800x600} x {160/40} x at least 2 for 32bit colour and high detail settings = 32)- probably closer to 40, as I have no real idea how much more work 32-bit colour and maximum detailed settings creates for the silicon. My untweaked AMD 2100+ CPU, GeForce 4400 Ti, and 1Gig of RAM is a nice, but fairly standard system, as was my P2-300 back then. In only three years we’ve leapfrogged to systems that dwarf those preceding them. It makes you wonder (and I mean wonderment) what level of home computing power is just around the corner.
posted by monty · at 11:54 am · filed under Editorials