Quake III
Quake III may not be as relevant a benchmark as it once was, but we cannot forget that literally tens of thousands of people play it on a regular basis. Patched up to v1.30. Get ready for some silly numbers.
The proximity of the 9700 and 9800's results informs us that the prodigious subsystem used is the limiting factor. That's kind of hard to believe with a 3.2GHz P4, Springdale PE and Corsair XMS3500 under the hood.
Upping the ante by placing a load of image quality into the benchmark does little to blunt the cards' performance.
Even 1600x1200x32, with a healthy dose of image enhancement, still allows for a decent average FPS. That pesky NVIDIA FX5900 Ultra takes this benchmark with comparative ease. The latest Catalyst drivers appear to give a larger helping hand to the 9700 Pro. It seems to remain relatively close to the flagship model.
