Main Menu, Terrain, and Effects

Main Menu

The Main Menu is fairly simple to use and gives you all of your options at the bottom left corner. Its eerie feel makes you feel right at home in terms of what to expect in a Quake game. Click on the Settings tab and check out the screens below.

The Main Menu of Quake 4, very eerie.

Click on Settings to get to the options.

Then click on System.

The go to advanced options to set attributes.

Settings in Depth

Low Quality

Quake 4’s low quality mode was originally designed for 64MB graphics cards and therefore uses compression for everything as well as lower resolution textures and 64x64 specular maps. This setting obviously will give you the lowest possible graphics but increase your frame rate. The difference in frame rates between Low and Medium is a fair amount so keep this setting if you are torn between the two. On the other hand, this is not really recommended unless you are running a very old card with a minimal amount of memory and an older CPU.

Low quality mode

Second low quality shot

Third low quality shot

Low quality #4

Quake 4 Performance 800x600
Performance	Normal	4x
RADEON X850 XT PE	88.1	79.2
GeForce 6800 GT	89.1	83
RADEON X700 PRO	78.6	60.1
RADEON X600 XT	58	33.8
RADEON 9500 PRO	18.8	NT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra	19.6	NT

Quake 4 Performance 1024x768
Performance	Normal	4x
RADEON X850 XT PE	91.3	72.4
GeForce 6800 GT	87.5	77.2
RADEON X700 PRO	68.7	44.6
RADEON X600 XT	40.6	24
RADEON 9500 PRO	18.9	NT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra	19.1	NT

Quake 4 Performance 1280x1024
Performance	Normal	4x
RADEON X850 XT PE	76.9	62.7
GeForce 6800 GT	74.8	57.6
RADEON X700 PRO	48	30.5
RADEON X600 XT	26.6	16.2
RADEON 9500 PRO	17.6	NT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra	17.1	NT

*Only cards with better results were tested with Anti-Aliasing. NT means “Not Tested”

Medium Quality

Quake 4’s medium quality mode continues to use compression for the game’s normal, specular, and diffuse maps. However, unlike the low quality setting, with the medium quality setting you’ll get high-resolution, 512x512 textures. This setting gives you above average frame rates and good image quality. However it is almost never recommended due to how close the benchmarks are to the same cards running in High Quality mode. Check out the benchmarks below for each card.

Medium quality mode

Second medium quality shot

Medium quality #3

Medium quality #4

Compare the medium and low quality images interactively!

Low quality mode

Medium quality mode

Compare Images Interactively!

Quake 4 Performance 800x600
Performance	Normal	4x
RADEON X850 XT PE	88.4	78.7
GeForce 6800 GT	92.5	87.3
RADEON X700 PRO	77.7	57.8
RADEON X600 XT	56.4	33.5
RADEON 9500 PRO	19.3	NT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra	19.3	NT

Quake 4 Performance 1024x768
Performance	Normal	4x
RADEON X850 XT PE	85.9	71.7
GeForce 6800 GT	86.6	76.3
RADEON X700 PRO	66.7	43.2
RADEON X600 XT	40.2	23.8
RADEON 9500 PRO	19.8	NT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra	18	NT

Quake 4 Performance 1280x1024
Performance	Normal	4x
RADEON X850 XT PE	82.9	61.4
GeForce 6800 GT	73.1	56.5
RADEON X700 PRO	46.1	29.7
RADEON X600 XT	26.4	16.2
RADEON 9500 PRO	18.2	NT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra	16.4	NT

*Only cards with better results were tested with Anti-Aliasing. NT means “Not Tested”