Why WinQuake exists and how it works

The detail that -wavonly (falling back to the older WinMM API instead of DirectSound) actually gave the highest frame rate is a perfect example of a lesson that keeps reappearing in systems programming: "more direct" doesn't always mean faster when you're CPU-bound. DirectSound's lower latency came at the cost of more CPU cycles that could otherwise go to rendering.

This is a great write-up for those of us that were into Quake when it was released. Trying to tune your performance was a huge undertaking during the days where you tried running Quake while also having Windows 95. I got into Quake because of all the available MAP tools you could use with it, and the multiplayer aspect, which previously had been very difficult to get working without a LAN.

That's some of the same stuff that SDL is meant to abstract over, right? Although I guess SDL was more targeting Windows / Linux differences than Windows / Windows differences.