"Back when Q3 was written that was about the best CPU available.
There was no need to update it to detect anything higher later. All it's really saying is that you have a 'pentium 3 class' cpu therefore it's using the optimum code available in the game." - me, http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php...-wrong-cpu
Lets say you are trying this game right now in 2014, due to the Steam release. You enter the game and it immediately says it doesn't detect your CPU correctly (it does not), even saying "pentium 3" and that you are using a hack. Lol.
Those tiny things add up to the vibe QL gives, which is that it is an unfinished and outdated game. Others are the awful geocities interface, the demos section, the frankly amateur made launcher, the "*spectator wins" message in the duel scoreboard, among many, many more.
Anyway. If you don't want to fix or remove it it's your loss really, but bear in mind that the 'mainstream' gamer is merciless when playing what is perceived as a quick fun f2p game, even of 'flash' category.
Quake's a game not a CPU detector, use cpu-z or similar for that.
All it has to do is check if you have a p3 class processor so it can run it's p3 path.
I've seen a grand total of 3 posts in 14 years questioning this and two including this one were in the past few days, it's really not worth getting your knickers twisted over.
It was changed in later id engines though, wolfenstein just detects that it's an Intel CPU, number of logical and physical cores, and a bunch of available extensions on my system.