Quake III: Arena makes use of Intel's SSE optimizations, leveling the playing field between the processors. In a fantastic display of visuals, we ran both systems through a low-resolution 640x480 timedemo in order to measure raw CPU power. The mention of Quake III conjures images of volumetric fog, impressive shaders, and animated textures - all in splendid 32-bit color. While T&L enables some of the transform functions to be sent to the GPU (for those lucky GeForce owners), processors are still responsible for lighting (vertex and lightmap) and those metallic shaders. Because of this, fast CPUs are as important as ever.
AMD isn't targeting the Duron processor family at the 'high-end'/gaming sector but rather at the commercial/business space, but that doesn't mean we at SE are going to ignore any gaming capabilities. After all, just how good is this value 'cut-down' Athlon for gamers on a tight budget? Well as the scores indicate, the Duron 700 showed up pretty well in the test. Although it scores some way behind any of Intel's Pentium III range all the way down to the 500MHz mark, it does fair well against the new Celeron 600, which scores 76.9. The real test will of course be when we can pit the Celeron 700 against the Duron 700 but for now, the Duron is a decent performer where Quake III: Arena is concerned.