32bit vs DXT3 and DXT5 textures

[Adrian Brausch]

I noticed with the Electra repaints I just did that the 32bit textures really had a large impact on FPS so I made another set in DXT3 which looked ..um...ORRIBLE !!..so tried a set in DXT5 and was alot better than DXT3 but still caused lots of ugly artifacts in the textures. At the end of the day I guess it is pretty much like slapping a jpg image on the models as aposed to BMP's if it is compressing (being the operative word) down from 5.33mbs for a 1024x1024 image down to 1.33mb image it is never going to be good..
Are there any other prgrams other than DXTBMP out there that are better at image compression or do they all do the same number crunch ?