AMD Athlon "Thunderbird" 1.1GHz

Quake III Arena has always been dominated by the Pentium III and because of the overclocked BX133's incredible memory performance combined with the 133MHz FSB, the 1.13GHz Pentium III on an overclocked BX platform makes the demo001 benchmark approach an incredible 200 fps.

The 1.1GHz Thunderbird isn't too far behind, but what you have to realize is that the majority of gamers don't play at 640 x 480 x 16, instead they find themselves being characterized by the results in our next test:

Notice a lack of deviation from around 80 fps? That's because this test is being limited not by the CPU, not by the FSB and not by the memory bus. Instead, at 1024 x 768 x 32, the GeForce2 GTS proves to be the limiting factor as the card itself is memory bandwidth limited. If you own any of the processors on this chart, even those that may be slower (unless you're stuck with a 66MHz FSB), your best bet would be to upgrade your video card before you even touch your CPU.

You can run most of today's 3D games just fine on a Pentium III 500 or an Athlon 500, as long as you have a fast enough video card.