Given my system, I thought I could run UT2003 in pretty much maxed details in 1024 * 768 resolution. The game runs pretty poorly and I must say I'm a little disappointed at its performance. Even when I turn down the texture details and world details, there's still not much of a performance gain. Also, even when I turn the texture details to the max, I can't really tell that much of a difference in the image quality... the grass in the game gets pretty blurry up close, and some metallic surfaces have some pretty bad textures when compared to other things in the game. But, who knows, maybe the grass isn't supposed to be incredibly detailed up close (perhaps those of you with a Radeon 9700 can tell me what your graphics are like) but I must say that the skulls on the floor in the Inferno level look amazing! Oh well... guess I was just expecting Halo-calibur graphics (MAN-- I really, REALLY wish there were fancy bump-mapping effects in UT2003!)
Another thing I'd like to mention: I get pretty good benchmarking results from running the benchmarker that came with the game; however, the game tends to slow down like its running in slow-motion sometimes while playing it. I know that my current graphics card isn't exactly top of the line, but is the source of this slow-down coming directly from my card, or is my processor perhaps a bottleneck (I find that unfathomable though).
Anyways, those of you with similiar systems: I'd like to know how well UT2003 plays for you. And those with Radeon 9700's: Does putting texture details at the max significantly improve image quality compared to normal setting textures?