Hardware trouble...?

[GrubanovJr]

Im new to the forum but played the Unreal series since the first Unreal. I recently bought an asus radeon 3870top 512ddr4, and expected that the framerate in my UT3 will never drop under 40-50 or even better. But sometimes it drops under 28 on 1280x1024!
Is that... normal? I have an athlonX2 5200+ 3gb ram...blah, blah, Standard issues...

[Takuhi]

Have you tried lowering the Texture levels? Try it on 2 or 3 and world detail on 2 or 3 too, if that works smoothly, just up it a little. Or you could use the tweak utility.

[AcidVenom]

This is actually normal. The maps are made of mostly static meshes now instead of the BSP brushes, the blocky look. The maps are also made on a grand scale to give you the feeling that you are in some other world. So at certain parts of the maps, there are tons of static meshes and the world beyond that needs to rendered causing your fps to drop.