I have a Sapphire 6970 and was having the same problem. I went into the catalyst control center and changed the anti-alias mode from super-sample AA to multi-sample AA and gained about 10 fps; from around 20 to 30.
On this mission the thermal imaging starts off good for me but degrades over a small amount of time to were I just see a plain white image of the vehicle. I have no addons running.