There are several possibilities.

A) Quake3 is defaulting to software rendering.  That's going to be SLOW.
You probably want to start quake 3 and specify the renderer on the command 
line.  If you read the README/instructions on the Q3 cd, they give you the 
commands.

Of course, that is assuming that:

B) Your Xserver is using hardware acceleration.  Typically this is done 
by including a module specific to your card in the config (read on).

I had this EXACT problem with my GeForce card.  I had to download the 
latest Geforce driver, install it, mess with my X config.  Then I had to 
change the script that starts Q3 to include the renderer on the command 
line - then it worked great on RH 7.3.

YMMV of course.

Gary



 On 8 Sep 2002, Chris Feltner wrote:

> I hope that somebody can help me out. Today I installed Quake 3 on my
> box; however, after I execute the program and try to play it, my courser
> goes so slow over the GUI. (Keep in mind that this doesn't happen over
> the regular desktop settings or in AbiWord, etc. Although this does
> happen when I try to play Tux Racer.) 
> 
> I have a Pentium II @ 400 Mhz,the minimum requirements for the game is 
> 233 Mhz. My video card is a S3 Savage4, at 32MB. I have 256MB of RAM and
> the minimum requirements are 64MB. I am running Red Hat 7.3, and I am
> assuming that Glibc 2.0 or greater came with the distro. (can anyone
> explain to me what Glibc 2.0 is? I am not sure what this is.)
> 
> I do not understand why this game is going so slow! Can anyone help me
> out? 
> 
> Thank you, Chris F.