Quake 3: Team Arena
Quake 3's Team Arena is our first true gaming application benchmark.

With the lowest possible visual quality settings, the G550 lags behind the competition by over 20 frames per second. Hovering under 50 frames per second is probably playable, but Team Arena's "Fastest" graphics settings are incredibly ugly. What happens when we turn on some visual goodies?

Things get really slow for the G550 as we break out the High Quality graphics setting; it doesn't even come close to being competitive. Forget competitive—even basic competency goes out the window here. The G550 manages not much more than a slide show. This isn't a gaming card, but still, this low of a score is a little disappointing.

Serious Sam
Serious Sam allows us to graph the G550's performance across an entire demo, which will show us how the G550 performs as the action progresses.

In 16-bit color, the G550 assumes its position at the bottom of the pile. What's interesting about the G550's frame rate is that it doesn't oscillate much at all; its performance, or rather its lack of performance, remains consistent throughout the demo.

The trend continues in 32-bit color, as the G550 slowly chugs along. You're not going to get a good frame rate with games on the G550, but at least the poor frame rate will be consistent.