Here’s something to liven up your weekend: a video of the Raspberry Pi running Quake 3. We’re still working on ironing a few kinks out (specifically, there seems to be a library issue which means our framerate, while good, isn’t quite as spectacular as we know it can be; we’re working on it as I post this) – but this is what test boards are for, and we’re making great progress getting the boards running smoothly.

I know some of our forum members are interested in building custom cases for your own Raspberry Pis, and have been asking about the heat that the board generates when it’s working hard. We feel you should be fine with the sort of thermoplastic cases that some of you are hoping to make using 3d printers: the chip doing all the work in this clip was still under body temperature after I’d filmed this demo four times, and feels surprisingly cool to the touch. This is also, of course, great news for power consumption. I hope that some of you can come to one of the conferences we’ll be participating in over the next few months (details will appear here on the blog and on the forums later when we’re confirmed) and have a look for yourselves.

Obviously, the Raspberry Pi isn’t intended as a gaming platform, but it’s very satisfying to let the Broadcom BCM2835 application processor off the leash (yes, I’m allowed to give you the part number now) and see what it can do in this sphere nonetheless. As Eben notes in the clip above, we’re hoping to show you a video of a bunch of us playing Q3 Deathmatch on some networked Raspberry Pis in a few weeks’ time – just because we can.