Thanks for the info Drager Sutter posted on this thread helped me improve my fps. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/AMD-ATI-Lag-Issues-WIth-Viewer-3-FIX/m-p/1107409/highlight/false#M7822
I was not able to get over 12 fps on low settings and 5 fps on high settings with my PhenomII x6, ATI Radeon HD5850, 16gb memory. I installed the 11.8 beta drivers with the OpenGL4.2 http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystOpenGL42BetaWin.aspx and started using the Firestorm 3.2.1 which came out before SL did some change to fix Nvidia cards. I can now get 30 fps on low settings and 20 fps on high settings. I also learned that my computer likes AA turned on so I set that at 8x, also got a few more fps by turning on Anistropic Filtering, and since this version is before SL's Nvidia loving I was able to turn on Enable VBO which improves my fps as well (10 fps with this disabled).
As a test I did go back and install the Catalyst 11.12 drivers and the fps went to crap again so i restalled the 11.8 beta OpenGL4.2 drivers and fps went back up.
With SL workign better I went to my sister's computer where she has an i7-920, Nvidia GTX 560, 12gb memory, logging in with the same character at the same location with the Firestorm 3.2.2 and was geting 60 fps on low, med, and high, and 55 fps on ultra settings. Her computer makes me jealous.