Radeon 8500 performance problem

I just upgrade from a geforce gts 32 MB to a radeon 8500 64 MB. On a quake 3 customed demo test run (FOUR.dm_67) i get 144 fps with my geforce gts 32 MB but i only gained 10 fps with my radeon 8500.
I reformatted my HD and reinstalled OS and everything and no improvements. I downloaded the latest driver froma ATI and still no improvements.
just by chance I noticed that without a sound card installed I gained 60 more fps.
What is wrong here? could the sound card be the culprit? I do have agp 4X enabled in the BIOS. I'm gonna get a sound blaster card tommorow. Please help. Here's my specs:

PIII 800
384 MB PC133
Asus P3V4 mother board VIA appolo
directx 8.1
4 in 1 driver version 4.29
Radeon 8500 retail 64 MB
ATI driver version 9016
Hercules, MUSE XL surround card 4.1 (sound card)

its your cpu holding you back the 8500 is only going to make a difference in newer games such as Max Payne and anything above 70fps is overkill your eyes cant tell the difference.....the reason you gained when you removed the sound card is because you took some pressure off the Cpu....l

bottleneck?

well I thought that the cpu may be the bottleneck but only 10 fps increase on such a card compared to the geforce2 gts?? also when i had install a much older sound card i actually lost a few fps compared to my geforce2 gts.
what about a new MB BIOS? i'm still using the oroginal BIOS that came with the MB. Since it's been stable i didn't want to take a chance to change it.

30 to 40 % of performance?

one other thing too is that without the sound card i gained approx 60 more fps...from 140...variously that's anywhere 30 to 40% more of total performance...i think it's a driver compatibility issue ...because that's too much of total resources overhead by the sound card driver and graphic car driver

hmmm...i did find this
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=79338

sounds like your problem...

also may i ask you what resolution this is at? because on my P3V4X and PIII600E@864 and a geforce2 Pro i could never break 100fps in QIIIA at 1024x768x32....also this is significant because at a resolution of 640x480 the graphics card is almost never the bottleneck and it is the cpu that holds you back because hardly any cards made in the last 2 years can be maxed out at 640x480...

QIII custom test

I'm actually running at 600 X 800 but my cfg file in Q3 is heavily mod so that i could get more fps. I actually turned off a lot of options in Q3. And I play excessive in Q3.
The test that I run is the FOUR.dm_67 setting not the typical demo001...
If you want to run this test as well let me know, I can set u up with the same test. I will need to provide you with the test file

the reason that you see only 10fps performance increase is because at that speed the GTs is not really the bottleneck the CPU is most any graphics card can handle 800x600 without bein g maxed out especially if its settings have been changed...i think youll find that if you set the resolution to 1024x768x32 and you turn on all the QuakeIII settings for nice looking graphics your fps will remain at about 140fps and im telling your body cannot tell the difference between 80fps and 480fps....your eyes and hands just arent that sensitive the game will look MUCH better if you turn on the eye candy and will be just as fast....just try it out...

agp 4x

Well actuall the more fps the bullets u'll hit ur opponents...ur right that your eys can't see the difference..but I play excessive and faster fps leads to more bullets.....so if ur running 50 fps and i'm running 200 fps...chances r when i hit u with the mg ...i get more bullets on u..

by the way, i remember that the asus p3v4x had an issue with running agp 4x..although in ur BIOS(1005) it says agp 4x ..but in actualityt it's not runing agp 4x...i saw a download module at asus for enabling agp 4x...like this

AGP 4X turn on Registry key for VIA 694x N.B. in Windows 95/98/ME/NT40/2000

but wasn't sure what VIA 694x N.B. means...this i assume allows the agp 4x to actually run on the p3v4x..and i would think that agp 4x will lead to faster performance of my video card

well try 1024x768x32 i dont think youll see a loss in fps...your graphics card is much better than that....

and turn on smoothvision!
you are letting that fill rate on the 8500 go to waste.
your cpu is the bottleneck. hell i have a 1.2ghz celeron and the cpu is STILL the bottleneck on my 8500