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Frames Per Second (FPS)
The goal in any FPS (First Person Shooter) game is to get the most amount of FPS (Frames Per Second) possible, that is within reason. A First Person Shooter is basically a game that puts you in the player's eye point of view, and usually involves shooting things. Frames per second are the number of picture images displayed each second, that give the image on your screen life-like motion. Some examples of where you've seen frames are your television, which displays 30 FPS; and movies on a film projector, which displays 24 FPS.
Quake 3 Arena at the optimum frame rate setting: 125 FPS. To see how many frames your PC can display per second, bring down the console (by pressing ~ on your keyboard) and type: \cg_drawfps 1
Quake 3 Arena's default frame rate is set at 85, which is quite fine. However, it is best to set it at a constant 125 FPS. Although, just because you set the maxium FPS at 125 doesn't mean you'll automatically display 125 FPS all the time. That depends on your computer hardware. A fast CPU, and a powerful video/graphics card will solve that issue. Anything below 60 FPS makes the game looks choppy, and hinders your ability to compete against other players with high-end systems. Getting a constant 125 FPS is excellent, and will make the game run smoothly, giving you an advantage over other players with outdated systems. However, it is ludicrous to play any game with a constant 400 FPS. You're just making the computer, as well as your video/graphics card work to hard to continually display that many frames, and you'll just end up frying your motherboard or video/graphics card in the end.