Try going to http://www.tweakguides.com . Read the one about doom3,i boosted my time demo fps from 33.5 to 39.9 using the guide and that ATI trick posted by humus. I also installed those beta catalyst 4.9 drivers. I ran it on 640x480, medium, no vsync, 4xaa with about 30-70 fps. You should run on High settings since you have a 256 card.
specs:
p4 2.66ghz
radeon 9800 128mb
512 ram