Another classic DOS game that uses the floating point unit (FPU) intensively. This is why you need a FPU to run Quake at all.
The benchmark results will be quite predictable in the long run. The Intel Pentium is known to have quite a decent FPU while the non-Intel parts like Cyrix 6x86, IDT Winchip, AMD K6 and Rise MP6 have quite a weak FPU. This is why those CPU's don't score well in the Quake benchmark. Luckily those CPU's have (in general) normal or decent integer performance so they will run desktop applications and operating systems like Windows very well. Just keep in mind that FPU performance wasn't needed for normal users back in the days of Quake.
Because I use Quake on systems with less 'Oomph' I use a 320x200 resolution. In case you want to use Quake for faster systems crank up the resolution a bit and use a very decent (DOS) graphic card as Quake doesn't use 3D acceleration. For the faster systems I use Quake II at 640x480 software rendering.
My benchmark method
To benchmark Quake I used version 1.08 (full version without modifications) and kept everything default at 320x200. Start Quake with 'quake -nosound' and start a new single player game.
Open the console with the ~ key and write 'timedemo demo3', then press enter and immediately press the console key again (~) so the console moves up when the benchmark begins.
After a while you will get a score in FPS. To verify the score it's advisable to benchmark two times so write 'timedemo demo3' again but this time don't press the console key (~) again. The benchmark will start again.
