Whats up with my rig?..and FARCRY?

[scarecrow1]

I have been testing my machine with far cry i would like to know some things.

My rig is :
AMD Athlon64bit 3000+
Gigabyte Motherboard K8NNXP
1.5 GIg of Geil DDR400 PC3200 RAM
Gexcube R9800XT256
120gig Maxtor HDD(farcry installed on this one)
120Gig Seagate SATA 8mb cache HDD
DVD RW/Rom
21" dell trinitron monitor
Desktop reso: 1152x864x32
FarCry reso: 1024x768x32
AA =application preference
AF =application preference

When i begin the game in the sewers i manage about 80 -120 fps(No AA and Low AF), then when i go outside it immediately drops to 35-40 fps(No AA and Low AF) and sometimes 25. Is this normal (for my machine) or should it be smoother and faster? I have catalyst 4.4, farcry patch 1.1, WinXp Sp1, DirectX9.b.

i checked another site which had similar specs to mine except different speed cpu, motherboard and ram: it had a 64bit 3400+, Asus V8 and 512 ram. Does the 3400+ cpu make a difference?

And is there anything i can do to fix up my machine.

Note: everything is installed properly.

Is it my machine or the Game?
Oh and i am currently running 32bit windows since there are no 9800Xt 64bit drivers, otherwise...i would try that.

But what is it?

[tony_j15]

This game is a MOTHER, so those framerates aren't bad at all. When you are outdoors, there are many highly detailed objects the game has to draw. Try turning off AF, you should get a few more fps.

[scarecrow1]

You cant turn off AF it just lets you set low, medium or high, how do i disable it?

[tony_j15]

go to the ATI control panel and disable it under the 3d tab.