Is it only Crysis you have a problem with?  Have you fully patched the game?

But even patched up, Crysis is a well known/infamous system killer - even under XP, and despite having a pretty decent system (what model system is it btw?) :emotion-6:

It's undoubtedly your 256MB graphics card which is the bottleneck though :emotion-55:

Although it may be perfectly suitable for other FPS, Crysis eats 256MB cards for breakfast, dinner, and tea... and still wants more!

Crysis is the only game I have installed. The game is not currently patched. It is a Dimension E521. I will try patching the game and I will report back. Also, todau I installed XP Pro SP3 and I gained a 5-10 FPS increase.

You will not be able to run at high with the 8800 card. you will most likely need to back things down to medium and no AAA.

I can run it on high, but I get 10-30 FPS. I have the 1.2 patch installed and I do see a difference in FPS.  am running it on medim 1280x720 with 20-50 FPS. I'm still wondering if this is normal FPS for my system.

That is more than likely about right to me. I know i got about the same with my 8800gts but i was also on a quad and x64 vista. I could only run on medium with most settings. Since moving to the GTX 260 all is on high

I can run it on high, but I get 10-30 FPS. I have the 1.2 patch installed and I do see a difference in FPS.  am running it on medim 1280x720 with 20-50 FPS. I'm still wondering if this is normal FPS for my system.

That is pretty normal for the older 256MB card.  The newer 512MB 8800GT/9800GT would do better.  With a 9600GT, I can run the game at 1440x900 on medium settings.  With Crysis Warhead, I have to turn it down to 1280x720 and medium settings.  Both running on Vista in DX10 mode.  You can pick up some FPS by running the game in DX9 mode, however.

It may be vista as vista takes 1.5 gb of ram just to run (which is crazy) and crysis is known to have very intensive graphics. I would think that it would be your graphics card. That graphics card would be good for standard games like WoW or The Witcher but Crysis runs at 60 something fps on a supercomputer and we're talking i7 processors overclocked running at 4.5 Ghz and duel ati 4875 (or whatever the newest video card from ati is) so really that isnt bad fps. You can pour money into better stuff or turn your settings down or keep them as they are. Hope this helped a little.

I don't have vista anymore. I un-installed it yesterday and Crysis is running better at 1440x900 medium. Warhead is at the same, both running good. I'm going to build a computer by summer or the end of this year. Until then, I will be using the E521.