Quake 1 & 2 (preview)

Quake is the first real-time game that use both vector/texture and raytrace-techniques for realistic imagery. Recently I 've calculated what sort of a CPU is minimal required for real-time full-screen raytrace. I calculated it for a 640x400x256k screen

It was a Pentium 300 !! An Atari at 8Mhz needs about one hour for an image at 640x400x1plane. So for at least fifteen frames per second you need an Atari-68k-CPU at 3600x15x8=432 Gigahertz. Since the introduction of the 68000-chip there has been a lot of enhancements and additions to CPU's. For example, a standard Intel Pentium has two intruction-pipes, that means it can execute 2 intructions at the same time, and with the proper MMX-implementation it will be able to execute MultiMedia at Twice or Trice the speed it usually does. Caching of the CPU (^256k) increases the speed sometimes even 100 times. Average is about 10-100. Tested on a 486-DX-33Mhz with two caches: Internal (8k) and External (256k)