Quake 3: Arena is our favorite gaming benchmark here at SE and its design can illustrate performance aspects of both CPUs and 3D video cards. This makes it a very flexible benchmark, and useful for a myriad of performance uses. Quake 3 is both floating-point intensive and has support for SIMD optimizations (MMX, 3DNow! and SSE), making it a great test for the enhanced Duron 1.1 GHz. In Quake 3 testing, the Duron 1 and 1.1 GHz processors were identified as supporting the game's Pentium III optimizations, while the other Duron and Athlon processors were not.

Quake 3 testing under both Windows 98SE and 2000 are included, with benchmarking using Normal (16-bit), High Quality and MAX graphic settings. Normal is the basic Quake 3 option (set at 16-bit color/textures), High Quality is at the Default setting, and MAX uses the standard High Quality settings and increases the detail levels t the max. Both Normal and High Quality benchmarking are quite good for pure CPU comparisons, but at the MAX level, the video card can often be the limiting factor.

One of the main issues many readers have with Quake 3 testing is with the SSE enhancements. Since Intel processors naturally score higher (such as in Pentium 4 vs. Athlon testing), it can be extrapolated that SSE plays some sort of role in this performance advantage. Now that AMD finally has a SSE-compatible CPU, let's see if increasing it to 1.1 GHz can yield better returns.

The Quake 3 benchmarks help demonstrate two key points regarding the performance of the Duron 1.1 GHz. First, the core enhancements do have a noticeable impact on Quake 3 performance, at least when compared to previous Duron processors. Secondly, the Duron 1.1 GHz now has both the power and features to finally pass the Athlon 1 GHz in Quake 3 framerates and does so at all detail settings. If this kind of improvement can be made with the Duron design, we can hardly wait to see how the higher-speed, SSE-enabled Athlon Palomino performs in Quake 3.

The benchmark testing illustrated that the Duron 1.1 GHz is both an architectural improvement and a much-needed speed increase over previous Duron designs. And while the Duron 1 GHz could not match the Athlon 1 GHz in sheer performance, we feel the Duron 1.1 GHz more than held its own and actually won the straight-up comparison. Where the Duron 1.1 GHz really shone was in multimedia environments like Content Creation Winstone, and SSE-enabled games like Quake 3. It should also be noted that Windows 2000 Pro looks to be better suited to the enhancements and features of the Duron 1.1 GHz, than does Win 98SE.