I played Unreal tournament 3 and continuously dipped down into the 40's for my framerate even though I've read of how so many people are getting such smooth framerate on "older" systems. I'm not that concerned about playing at ultra high resolutions/gfx settings, but am more concerned with a framerate higher than 60 at ALL times. I would have thought that my sys would be able to do this, but I might be wrong.

Is this game extremely bottlenecked by the the processor, or is there a setting in the game I can adjust to minimize cpu calculations like there is for minimizing calculations on the video card.

by the way, I have tried lower resolutions and min gfx settings, but framerates have not increased.

sys spec
3800+ x2 @ 2.7 Ghz
evga 8800gt superclocked
2x1gb kingston ddr2 667

I also have a laptop with a core 2 duo t7500 2.2ghz with a mobile nvs 135 (equivalent to 8400m gs) in it. I've tried playing the game at like 320 by 240 resolution at the lowest gfx setting and this game runs the cpu up to 100% as well. as long as it stays below 100%, I can get 60+ fps. I would have thought a 2.2 GHz core 2 duo would have been plenty for this game (even though it is a mobile proc)

any thoughts on how to improve my framerate other than upgrading?

UT3 ran on my system and kept a framerate always over 60 when playing at 1680x1050 on the highest in game settings, and my CPU is nearly identical to yours. I do own the PhysX card, but I doubt that makes any difference as we all know it was just a gimmick.

Try 2 more gigs of ram......