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Comment by dave1010uk | Hacker News Reader

This is really great! I'd be interested to know what framerate the Pi can output at 1080p.

Someone ported Quake 3 to ARMv6 Symbian smartphones in 2008 [0]. I remember running this on a Nokia E90 Communicator and the framerate was over 15fps most of the time.

[0] http://koti.mbnet.fi/hinkka/Download.html

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Not sure about the Pi, but the Pandora which has similar ARM class of hardware can run Quake 3 at 25-30+ fps in 800*480 resolution. The GPU of the Pi may be more powerful while its CPU is weaker.

The competition rules said at least 20 fps, which seems playable.

I used to run Doom 2 on my 386sx. Doom 2 required a math co-processor, which the sx didn't have, so I had to use a TSR which emulated one, slowing my CPU down even more. It probably ran at 1-2 FPS, but it was "playable" enough for me to spend countless hours playing it. Ahhh, memories...

So yeah, 20 FPS is definitely what I would call playable. ;)

Doom (or Doom 2 which had basically the same engine with just bugfixes and support for Doom 2 entities) didn't actually need an FPU. Even 386DX's or 486SX's had no FPU so no games from the pre-1995 era really depended on it.

I remember Falcon 3.0 and perhaps some other simulation games having support for FPU for those few who had one however...

On an N95 I remember it running even better than that. That port was actually amazing, and it even supported a full KB & Mouse via Bluetooth.

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