Why is Quake III so slow on my PC?

[Thermodynamic]

On other tech websites, they use Quake III Arena at 1024x768, 32-bit color to get a FPS benchmark. Their numbers go into the 200+ FPS area and use high powered h/w (of course the recent ones use the ATi Radeon 9700 card which gets like 300+ FPS).

I'm assuming they edit the q3config.cfg file to enable the FPS display.

I only get 90 FPS at 1024x768x32-bit.

Here's my system:
Asus A7V333 w/ 1GB PC2700 RAM
Athlon 2100+ XP CPU o/ced to 2700+ level (13x166)
BFS Asylum 128MB video card (nVidia GeForce 4 4600)
7200 RPM WD 40 GB HD

90 FPS is still fast, but other systems get much higher frame rates. Where am I going wrong?

Thanks!

[Gnerma]

Is 90 perhaps your refresh rate? 90 fps is all you are seeing, and if those reviewers are running the game on a monitor that has its refresh set to 90, that is all they are seeing as well. The difference is likely that you have vsync enabled, meaning the system will only spit out as many FPS as what the refresh rate is set to. Even if you disable vsync you won't get more FPS, sure the system will make more (200+ like you were saying) but you would only see 90 of them.

[qdx]

I'm really not sure why you want to get it going faster but anyway, have you:
- Updated your drivers
- Get DirectX 9 (I heard it's crap though)
- Close all other programs
- Tweaked your BIOS

[CSaddict]

The reason you only get 90 frames per second is that the max fps is set to 90 in the quake file. Change the maxfps to 300 and then you should be set. It's in the base3 file in the q2config file. Go through until you find the maxfps and change it to 300 and save the file. Your looking for seta com_maxfps "90" . Change the 90 to 300. Done!

[6502kid]

or change it to 0 and there will be no cap.....