[Cugel]

mecharmor 23,

I have a Geforce2 MX, 1000Mhz Athlon, 256mb RAM, based system and I still get framerate drops (particularly on the spells Mist and Fire - ones with particle effects). I found enabling a 60fps frameskip reduced it to almost nothing but the system literally crawled (5 or six fps) everytime those big insects cast mist on Beatrix and Steiner in Alexandria and Firega limped slightly. I just put it down to experience as the rest of the game ran perfectly (except the swirls, obviously)

Anyway, my point is that it may be better to live with it than shell out for a card you sound like you don't really want, or upgrade memory - it may not solve the problem anyway.