Hi every one,
I have been looking at screen shots of .blends that were created by others, and I see that they have huge frame rates, one guy had 137, another 145. All on fair sized scenes, My question is why on a computer that is brand new(2 gigs of ram) do I get 45 fps on a empty scene? I asked this on another post, but then lost track of it. So if this was answered sorry about bringing it up again. Thanks in advance…
One contributing factor is your video card. Even if you just got a new machine, it probably doesn’t have that great of a video card (especially if you weren’t specifically looking for one). If you have an integrate Intel graphics solution, then you’ll probably get unsatisfactory frame rates. This can be solved with a $60 graphics card.
My question is why on a computer that is brand new(2 gigs of ram) do I get 45 fps on a empty scene?
Even a decade old intel integrated graphics chip gets better frame rates than that. My best guess is that your OpenGL graphics drivers are not up-to-date.
PS: Are you using a laptop?
Yes, I am using a laptop. My graphics card is a ATI Radeon HD3200 Graphics. Hoooeeeyyyy, thats a important sounding name. NOW, does it do anything for me?
I’m going to guess that it’s still an integrated solution (as opposed to discrete). I’d make sure to allocate at least 256MB of your system RAM to it (more would probably be good). And, as C-106 Delta said, make sure you have the latest OpenGL drivers (just get the latest drivers from ATI/AMD’s site).
I have an old nVidia 7100 hooked up to my blender box, framerate on default scene is roughly 60fps. I managed to increase this to over 140 fps by turning of vsync in nVidia control panel and enabling all frames in blender.
ATI videocards are terrible for me, there are a lot of bugs with blender and some other applications. Your graphic card is weak for new filters and things like that, dont think that you have a super ultra computer, because you dont have it.
Every graphics card is going to be capped at 60(~ish)fps unless vsync is turned off. It’s kind of what vsync does. 
How do I turn vsync off then? And which graphics card do you suggest for better framerate?
You want to keep vsync on. vsync syncs up frame draws with your monitor’s refresh rate so that. When you’re not doing this you get an effect called tearing, which you don’t want. If you’re already below whatever vsync will cap you at, then turning it off will only cause problems. And 60fps is plenty. 
As far as graphics card goes, I’d first check your drivers.