Desktop CPU Comparison - September 99

Quake 3 & SMP

Quake 3 was the second, and final application we tested that exhibited a greater than 5 - 10% increase in performance when using dual processors.  To enable SMP in Quake 3 Test (1.06 and above), from the console type 'r_smp 1' (without the quotes) and then enter.  Then exit Quake 3 and run it again, upon re-entering you should now be able to take advantage of both of your processors in the test.  Remember that this only works if you have two processors, and the current test doesn't support more than two processors (it is doubtful that the final version will support any more than two either).

At the 'Fastest' image quality setting, to truly exhibit raw CPU power, the performance improvement is amazing.   Although it would be quite a costly upgrade to make just for one game, in the future, more and more games may follow the path of id and support SMP natively for the professionals that love to use their multi-thousand dollar systems for gaming during the nights.

Once again, we're noticing that the Celeron doesn't benefit all that much from being run in dual processor configurations, at the same time, considering that a Celeron 366 goes for under $60 now adding a second Celeron 366 is very cheap way of adding a noticeable performance increase to your system, provided that you are running under NT or a SMP capable OS.  Adding another Pentium III 450 on the other hand, is a more pricey issue.