# Why isn't an older game like Quake 3 Arena as smooth as butter on this new high powered video card?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-an-older-game-like-quake-3-arena-as-smooth-as-butter-on-this-new-high-powered-video-card/756782
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 7, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-an-older-game-like-quake-3-arena-as-smooth-as-butter-on-this-new-high-powered-video-card/756782 "2016-06-07T22:49:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-an-older-game-like-quake-3-arena-as-smooth-as-butter-on-this-new-high-powered-video-card/756782/1 "2016-06-07T22:49:47Z")
I like to play the [Quake Arena 3 bots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena)for relaxation. I don’t judge you, don’t judge me. The Game is 16 years old and plays fine on older video cards. So, anyway there was a Newegg sale happening and I got a relatively powerful (for me) video card described below last month.
> [@](#):
>
> MSI Radeon R7 250 DirectX 12 R7 250 2GD3 OC 2GB 128-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
for my Windows 10 Intel i3 based desktop. So I’m thinking the game should be butter smooth and amazing on this thing. It’s anything but, it’s worse than graphics card on a motherboard chip old school Pentium units. It plays but I swear you can almost see the frames go by as the action changes.
Are modern video cards and OS’s simply not all that compatible with old school games?
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### Author:  [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2016, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-an-older-game-like-quake-3-arena-as-smooth-as-butter-on-this-new-high-powered-video-card/756782/2 "2016-06-07T23:45:49Z")
> [@astro](#):
>
> I like to play the [Quake Arena 3 bots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena)for relaxation. I don’t judge you, don’t judge me. The Game is 16 years old and plays fine on older video cards. So, anyway there was a Newegg sale happening and I got a relatively powerful (for me) video card described below last month.
>
> for my Windows 10 Intel i3 based desktop. So I’m thinking the game should be butter smooth and amazing on this thing. It’s anything but, it’s worse than graphics card on a motherboard chip old school Pentium units. It plays but I swear you can almost see the frames go by as the action changes.
>
> Are modern video cards and OS’s simply not all that compatible with old school games?
Probably a driver compatibility problem. I’m pretty sure Quake 3 used OpenGL, so you may need to add a wrapper to tell the system what to do with it.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2016, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-an-older-game-like-quake-3-arena-as-smooth-as-butter-on-this-new-high-powered-video-card/756782/3 "2016-06-08T01:32:20Z")
Also, wasn’t Quake III released back in the Win 95/98 days? Those were DOS-based OSes, so I suspect that if you’re running it on Win 10, you’re probably running it in compatibility mode, and that probably needs some settings tweaking.
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### Author:  [@SigMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SigMan)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2016, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-an-older-game-like-quake-3-arena-as-smooth-as-butter-on-this-new-high-powered-video-card/756782/4 "2016-06-08T02:05:12Z")
I won’t judge you because I still play Duke Nukem 3D on my i5 PC. It has a Windows port so no problem. Simple controls and hundreds of maps is why I still play it.
And fun. 🆒
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2016, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-an-older-game-like-quake-3-arena-as-smooth-as-butter-on-this-new-high-powered-video-card/756782/5 "2016-06-08T02:08:41Z")
I did that and it was a big help. Thanks!