We study unconstrained and constrained linear quadratic problems and investigate the suboptimality of the model predictive control (MPC) method applied to such problems. Considering MPC as an approximate scheme for solving the related fixed point equations, we derive performance bounds for the closed-loop system under MPC. Our analysis, as well as numerical examples, suggests new ways of choosing the terminal cost and terminal constraints, which are not related to the solution of the Riccati equation of the original problem. The resulting method can have a larger feasible region, and cause hardly any loss of performance in terms of the closed-loop cost over an infinite horizon.