I was just surfing around and found a website with some Quake split screen shots to compare with and without a 3Dfx accelerator.  Some interesting info.   8-)

http://www.marky.com/3d/quake/quake-split.jpg

Pity they didn't compare the same resolution :). Quake with software rendering looks a lot better with 640x480 or higher.

Actually I always play Quake (yes, sometimes I do) in the good old software rendering. Somehow I'm used to that so it plays better for me. I also remember that setting the fov to 120 (Field of Vision) didn't work with the GLQuake so I didn't switch to GLQuake when I first got a Voodoo Graphics card.

Thandor wrote on 08.12.09 at 21:37:55:

Pity they didn't compare the same resolution :). Quake with software rendering looks a lot better with 640x480 or higher. Actually I always play Quake (yes, sometimes I do) in the good old software rendering. Somehow I'm used to that so it plays better for me. I also remember that setting the fov to 120 (Field of Vision) didn't work with the GLQuake so I didn't switch to GLQuake when I first got a Voodoo Graphics card.

They did not compare the two scenes at the same resolutions probably to show clearly that with 3Dfx there is no frame rate loss at double of resolution ;)

Quake1 software is very slow at high resolution, anything higher than 320x200 (modex) or 320x240 will be unplayable - at least on CPUs of those days - P2 wasn't on market when Q1 demo was launched back in 96 - only P1 and P Pro (very expensive CPUs). Later, P2 made a Q1 software playable in 640x480, but even on P2 450 is a little choppy at that resolution. Of course that in our days you can run it very fast in software mode, but even so - you are limited to 1280 resolution for software. And I think that GLQuake looks much better than software Quake. There's a lot of other engines - Fitzquake, GLQRack, Tenebrae, Darkplaces (with Rygel hi res textures it looks awesome - but you need a very good videocard - 8800 or higher).