The last couple of settings you can toggle on or off in Q3Test have to deal with weapon effects. Marks on walls does just that - it controls whether or not weapons leave scorch marks and so forth on the walls and floors. Ejecting Brass seems to only affect the machine gun and the shotgun and display shell casings that fly off from the gun and land bouncing on the floor when you fire the weapon. Pretty common sense stuff, but how do they affect our frame rates?

	On	Off	% Loss/Gain
TNT Demo1	38.4	39.1	+1.82%
TNT Demo2	53.0	55.4	+4.53%
V2 Demo1	40.0	41.1	+2.75%
V2 Demo2	48.5	50.0	+3.09%

Marks On Walls On	Marks On Walls Off

I wasn't expecting there to be very much difference in the scores on demo2, much less a larger difference than on demo1. Marks on walls are neat and I think add a good bit of fun to the game (ever tried writing your name with the plasma gun before the marks wear off?) but they're certainly not a necessary part of gameplay. I'd say leave this option on, but you're not missing much (nor are you gaining a tremendous amount) by disabling it.

Ejecting Brass:

	On	Off	% Loss/Gain
TNT Demo1	38.4	38.2	-0.52%
TNT Demo2	53.0	53.5	+0.94%
V2 Demo1	40.0	40.1	+0.25%
V2 Demo2	48.5	49.0	+1.03%

Ejecting Brass	Ejecting Brass

The TNT numbers on this one baffle me, as turning it off actually decreases the frame rate slightly in demo1, which is more likely a good indication of actual gameplay. Either way, it doesn't make anything of a significant difference with it off or on, so it doesn't really matter which way you play. If you like seeing the shell casings, turn it on. If you don't care, turn it off. Either way, you're not really missing anything.

Finally, the last set of numbers… something that's not readily apparent as a game setting, but I think is an important one: weapon visibility. The game defaults to displaying your weapon on screen so you can see the end of it. It doesn't really do or help anything other than making it blindingly obvious to you what weapon you're currently using if you'd forgotten or something. To turn display of your weapon off, type cg_gun 0 at the console, and cg_gun 1 to turn display back on again. Does it affect your frame rate? You bet it does:

Weapon Display:

	Off	On	% Loss/Gain
TNT Demo1	38.4	36.7	-4.43%
TNT Demo2	52.0	51.9	-0.19%
V2 Demo1	40.6	39.2	-3.45%
V2 Demo2	49.5	49.6	+0.20%

Gun Display Off	Gun Display On

The results for demo2 should have been identical, since the entire demo is from a spectator's point of view. They weren't, which is strange, but they were close enough not to matter. From first-person, actual playing view, there's a 3.5 to 4.5% hit in frame rate as the client has to draw this big gun in your field of view, and with the machine gun this adds additional light flares to the mix as well. I think it's best to play with the weapons not visible. It gives you a small increase in frame rate, and you don't have your field of vision obscured by the weapon either.