This page contains solutions and tips for various tearing, lagging, jerky and sucky Quake configurations.

Common tips

More FPS = smoother quake. So is important to use independent physics. This is preset on ezQuake client.
Use maximum vertical refresh frequency of the screen. This is the ultimate tip. See below for how-to.
Overclock the usb port to have at least 500hz (updates) per second. This is ultimate tip #2.
Turn off vertical synchronization on your graphics card settings and also in ezQuake by setting vid_vsync 0.0. If you want to keep things smooth but not suffer the quality loss of turning vsync off, enable double/tripple buffering. In software rendering version you have to use -dibonly command line options and vid_nopageflip 1 setting.
Dont forget to install soundcard/motherboard/chipset drivers from the hardware manufacturer's site. They also tend to have a FAQ or something similar there. To identify the hardware on Linux, run lspci. Windows has a built-in one in the control panel, but it's not the greatest so there might be some good 3rd party tools.
Make sure that no other program is running when you run quake. They steal your CPU and therefore make FPS hits. This is especially true if your pc is old.

Important tips

Setting independent physics

No matter what your monitor type is, make sure you got this enabled. To set it on Ezquake: cl_independentphysics 1
cl_nolerp 0
pushlatency 0 (older clients)
cl_physfps 77

FPS Limit Fine-Tuning

Don't set cl_maxfps to 0. Define a limit, based on the power of your pc. The more the better, but you want a stable value, so you got to figure that number out. The number you choose must be related on your monitor's refresh rate. cl_maxfps can be equal, double, triple, 10 times the value of refreshrate. This usually delivers good results. Just don't set it too high, you want stable fps.

Especially with LCD devices be aware if your FPS limit (cl_maxfps) is a multiplication of your display refresh frequency. For example using 75 Hz display refresh frequency and FPS limit 225 (= 3*75) will be significantly different from using 235 FPS.

Setting custom refresh rates

Which value? The higher the better. Current LCD technology limits to 75hz in any resolution. But on CRT's thats a different story. Depending on the quality and size of your crt monitor, you can use higher/lower refresh rates. And screen resolution is important also, if your monitor handles 154hz on 640*480 it probably wont handle with 154hz on 800*600 or 1024*768. Common advice is to use screen resolution of 640*480 so you can use the highest refresh rate possible. If graphic quality is important to you, you might wanna try higher resolutions, but it will lower your refresh rate.

If you got a recent graphics card, the drivers probably has inbuilt custom refresh rate feature. If not, its recommended to use an external program like Powerstrip or Refresh Lock. Search the net on how-to's or contact us if you got trouble.

Mouse refresh rate

This measures how many times the input of your mouse is updated. Preset value is 125hz. But if you "overclock" this value to 250hz, 500hz or even 1000hz, you will notice a GREAT improvement on the smoothness. 1000hz is too resource consuming, and its not that different than 500hz. You can try 1000hz only if you have more than 500fps. There are several programs that do this, you can try this. You can check your current mouse rate using this tool.

Some examples

These are usually good combinations of refresh rate, cl_maxfps and mouse rate. These refresh rates are only possible on CRT screens.
Sync everything and you get smooth experience (125Hz monitor, 125fps, 125Hz mouse). Sync parts of it with very high refreshrates and you'll get smoother experience (150Hz monitor, 500fps, 500Hz mouse). To make it overkill, use very high refreshrates with slight desync (150Hz monitor, 13*77=1001fps, 1000Hz mouse).
1) 120Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 120, 500Hz mouse
2) 154Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 154, 500Hz mouse

even better 1): 120Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 240, 500Hz mouse
even better 2): 154Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 1001, 1000Hz mouse

In any of these cases you can use you can try setting the cl_maxfps to 231, 308, 385, 462, 539, and so on

Thanks to Renzo by providing the info.

Other tips

Control CPU Sharing

Because your CPU needs to be shared with different system applications - including system services - it gives you another place to fine-tune smoothness of your Quake configuration. You can get into following situations.

Both Quake and background services get enough CPU time and everything runs smooth
Other applications get too much CPU time while the Quake engine needs more so the rendering gets jerky
Other applications do not get enough CPU time and for example your mouse/keyboard input is delayed for more then a second

To control how CPU should be shared when Quake is running you can use ways described below.

Quake CPU yielding

If you use FPS limitation (cl_maxfps), you can control what happens in the moment when the client finished rendering the current frame and it has nothing to do until it's a right time to start rendering the next frame. Either it can run in a loop or it can give CPU to other applications. To control it use sys_yieldcpu variable. Setting it to 0 will not give the CPU to other applications and vice versa.

System CPU Sheduling

In Windows it's possible to set preferred way for CPU sheduling in your Control Panel - System - Advanced tab - Performance - Advanced tab and choose if Programs or Background services should be preferred. The default setting for workstation computers is to prefer Programs. However this doesn't mean that this value is recommended.

Quake Priority

You can try changing Quake process priority. You do that with the sys_highpriority variable in FuhQuake and ezQuake clients. Try all values from within the set -1, 0 and 1. Also you may try more specific values by selecting your client process in the Task Manager and changing it's priority in there. Task Manager gives you 6 possible priority settings.

Useful Ezquake commands

if you get pixels in ezquake, try gl_ztrick 0 or 1 if you need more fps (you can use fps.qwd demo for benchmark), try r_dynamic 0 and use lower screen resolution

Tools

If you dont have quake installed already use NQuake as the installation media.

http://nquake.com

You can find lots of tips for the ezQuake client in the Independent Physics Guide.

If you have an ATI or NVIDIA card you should always install their official (proprietary, only in binary form) drivers to get the highest fps. There's also a popular 3rd party driver with some optimizations for ATI/NVIDIA. It comes with various tools for adding modelines and overclocking; (note that r200 is fully supported in linux with the opensource x.org driver)

Other tools:

Powerstrip or PCWizard or newest Nvidia drivers - With these programs u can fine-tune your display frequency. If you dont use independent-physics, it might be a good idea to set your quake's resolution display frequency to 77hz. Or 154 if you have at least 19' monitor.
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Monitors

CRT screens are better for gaming. See TFT for some tips if you're using a TFT (LCD) monitor.

OS-specific settings

Other settings depend on the Operating system you are using. See below for OS-specific tips.

Linux

See Smooth Quake in Linux

Macintosh

Ezquake is in general the recomended client, but you can also try fuh if everything fails :P Binary version of Fuhquake > http://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/fuhquake/

If nothing helps please come to irc on #qwhelp or #qwrookie and we will try to fill in the missing pieces

Smooth Quake

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