12. Open GL Games: Quake3 Arena

The discrepancy between CPU and graphics performance is even more conspicuous with Quake3 Arena.

Raising the CPU clock speed in 16 bit mode has a positive effect on performance only at a resolution of 640x480 pixels. Beyond that, the graphics subsystem (32 MB video memory) is no longer able to quickly process the texture data being produced. This also means that the benchmark only scales a color depth of 32 bits at a resolution of 320x240 pixels.

Based on the results under Quake3, it's quite clear that even the quickest notebook processor is unable to contribute anything to game performance if the graphics are not up to snuff. Because the performance level is satisfactory even with a slower CPU, the user should ask himself if he really needs the fastest processor.