lol BFG10K, i find it funny that you look to fututre hardware for your solution
		
		
	 
And why would that be? Hardware upgrades are about the only thing I have control over to guarantee better performance (aside from tweaking of course). Better drivers and game patches are nice but they're also out of my hands.
	
	
		
		
			and compleatly overlock the absurdity of released a game that can't sustain over 30fps on even some of the fastest systems and at the lowest quality.
		
		
	 
Well yes and no. 
I do agree that it sucks because it's slow but at the same time you don't really know if the problem is the engine or if the game is simply demanding. When there are no enemies around you can yield almost a linear speed gain in the game by dropping your resolution, which leads me to suspect that the maps are pretty demanding in terms of geometry, polygons, particle effects and all of the other eye candy they employ. And the slowdowns during battles could well be the AI and the physics slowing it down.
I'd probably suspect a combination of both a demanding game and an engine that isn't quite optimal. However the fact is, that kind of eye candy just doesn't come for free regardless of how optimal the engine is.
	
	
		
		
			i will tell you for sure that an r350 will get you next to nothing in this cpu limited game
		
		
	 
It most certainly will as there are heaps of the places where the game is GPU bound and dropping from 1600 x 1200 to 1152 x 864 yields a very large performance increase. I do agree though, the game is primarily CPU bound but a faster video card will still make a large difference.
	
	
		
		
			my only hope is that this was a simple mistake and the guys at epic/legend have some code laying around that will make it into a pach which will make this game run reasonably well all the way though.
		
		
	 
That's certainly a valid possibility and I hope this happens too.
BTW have you tried the Catalyst 3.1s from ATi? The game runs a little smoother with them, as does UT2003. It's not a massive difference but it is noticeable.