Q33. Does 3D Blaster PCI's Quake work with other 3D cards?
The 3D Blaster PCI Quake is a Speedy3D version that has been optimized only for cards that make use of the Rendition Vérité chip. It will work on any card that makes use of the Vérité chip but it will not work on 3D cards that do not utilize the Rendition chip such as Orchid's Righteous 3D and Matrox Mystique.
With 3D Blaster PCI, your upgraded Quake will support advanced 3D features like perspective-correct texture mapping, bilinear filtering and z-buffering; it will also be able to go to higher resolutions without losing speed. All this means you will be immersed in more spectacular graphics and realism at superb frame rate performance.
None of the above 3D features are available in the software version. On top of that, in order to achieve respectable speed at high resolutions with software only ie. without hardware assistance, you will need a powerful machine no less than a P166.
Q35. Some people said they could not achieve 30fps in Quake with 3DB PCI. Is 30fps possible at all?
This depends on WHERE in the map you tested the frame rate. Frame rate is dependent on several factors: the complexity of the setting, the number of moving objects in the scene, the effects implemented (eg. lighting), the level of activities (eg. the amount of axing and blasting that is going on) and so forth.
And of course results will vary with different system configurations. Ultimately though what really matters is your comfort level with the smoothness of the gameplay and not the absolute number of frames per second.