heavy fps stuttering, r_finish (sync every frame) & com_maxfps

[Cacatoes]

I happened to reset my q3config.cfg, and had experienced stuttering which made the game almost unplayable.
I wondered which setting was responsible of this, because setting details to very low didn't fix anything.
So it seems when com_maxfps is too high (it was set to 85), I experience stutters. Syncing every frame (r_finish 1) option solves the problem and gives the best results for me. Setting com_maxfps to some lower value, like 50, make the stuttering almost disappear but then framerate is a bit lower than what my graphic card can achieve.
This could be quite annoying when people are unaware of it, and I wonder if other Linux users who have an Intel card (GMA965 in my case) experience the same issue.
That said, we haven't seen many players complaining about FPS stuttering recently.
I didn't experience such thing in the past.

I run Intel drivers 2.12 and Mesa 7.8.1.