To further illustrate the point we ran the Quake III QUAVER test (done by Reverend) based upon everyone's favorite looking Q3DM9.

This particular map stresses the video card more than any of the other levels in Quake III: Arena and when turning on all the bells and whistles at high resolutions it becomes unplayable even with a 32MB DDR GeForce 256 (dipping below double figures in terms of fps). Running the 64MB DDR GeForce showed roughly a 3x (29fps as opposed to 9.3) performance increase in one case. Very smart indeed.

Don't get too excited though. Playing Quake III at 1600x1200x32 with the textures and geometry at the highest settings possible is not going to be possible just yet- even with the 64MB card from Dell. 21.3fps with the 64MB DDR card as opposed to 10.5fps with the 32MB DDR card might seem like an impressive speed jump but it's still not ample for our gaming needs. It does however show off what the card could be capable of under the right circumstances. We'll revisit this with the NV15 and certainly with Dell's 'souped-up' version as and when it becomes available.