If that's how you feel about it then I can't say much :D. Your CPU after all :).
My feeling is that as long as you have adequate cooling you can run CPU's very hard and if it shortens the life a bit it's most likely that it won't shorten it before it's obsolete.
Think about the 3d rendering they do for most movies these days. Those will happily eat up every free CPU cycle and they run them for days and days when doing a final render.
They aren't popping in new CPU's every month simply because they do keep them cool enough.
(even when my CPU is around 80 - 90% usage it's temperatures are more than fine even after hours of run time)

Nvidia users:
Forcing ON Vsync on Nvidia control panel gets the game "working" on D3D mode. I still get blank menus and terrible graphics (Bad d3d support?)
i7-920
6GB Ram
GTS 250
Win7 HP X64.

It's a no go using d3d for me. Getting rainbow menus, crappy graphic and unplayable (as usual stuttering and wonky driving). I still cant get a playable framerates and working menu so far. For me it is still 6 dollars wasted :(

Does this mean that the 'kill explorer' batch file and/or the 'Display Property Menu' workaround don't work on Windows 7?

No, it works fine here. Everything looks like it should. Win7 x64. Actually, running in d3d mode and forcing vsync via Nvidia control panel seems to work pretty well. Thought I'd already tried it. Thanks for the tip.
EDIT: No, now it's all wobbly again. Strange though, first time after I switched from Glide, Taurus seemed to be doing very nicely, straight wheels and no slowing down.
Graphics are still OK, though. Those of you who still get rainbow colors, check previous pages for the kill explorer trick.
As for some speculation about why the problem occurs:
It seems the AI is tied up to the frame rate. It checks and tries to correct its position once per frame. In this game, it's often supposed to follow a scripted path, which is probably programmed into the level. However, when said path was designed, it was not taken into account that the game might be played at more than 30-ish fps. In order to accomodate higher frame rates, the path would have to become smoother. That is, one change of direction per added frame. The path, however, is fixed. So, when I run the game at, let's say 400 fps, the AI checks and tries to correct its position 400/25= 16 times more often than it should, and 375 of those times that position will be wrong. 60 fps too seems to be sufficient to screw things up. No wonder it's stressed out.
The question still remains whether this hypothesis can be used to attack the problem, though .. The perfect solution would be to limit the AI, but I'm not a programmer and have no idea if it could be done. Also, we could lock the framerate of the physics engine only. Or maybe it's possible to make the scripted path as smooth as the terrain resolution.

all the workarounds for "wobbly wheels" AIs worked for me for like 2 games... but then they came back with a vengeance. Now not even using FRAPS to limit my FPS to 10 fps stops the AI from jerking the wheel around and driving at 30mph max. :/

Dang, wish I had seen this thread before buying the game. Did GOG skip the QA process or something?

Indeed. I don't wanna sound pessimist of something, but I don't see a reliable fix coming. Il try playing on my Acer 1410 (Su3500 + XP + GMA 4500HD).
So Acer 1410 results: (Core 2 Solo Su3500 1.4GHZ + XP + GMA4500HD):
Software rendering: terrible. Taurus can't overtake me on the first cutscene. Get the idea?
D3D: Works better than my I7 PC. Wheels still wobles a bit, still terrible graphics but at least the menus are ok.
Glide: Perfect. Ill try to get to mission 4 and see if I can make the jump.
Update 01: Jump works fairly well. If you jump @ 140-150 it's doable.

Has anyone emailed support with these issues? And gotten a response? If they get a lot I assume they'll work on an update...
I know I'm not buying til I hear something.

I just fired off a support ticket with a link to this thread, so now they should definitely be aware of the problem. So now we play the waiting game and see if they can fix it.

I get the occasional wheel wobble, but the game seems to be almost completely playable for me. As of this time, I haven't beaten the whole game.

I'm having problems on both Windows 7 64 bit and Windows XP Profesional SP3. -Glide + kill explorer batch script + and dgVoodoo works, but only for 1 mission at a time. The game crashes if I want to start up another mission. It gives the 'Unhandled Exception' eror when I'm back in Windows.
I'm also having issues with the visibility of the menu text on XP. The game also crashes in the middle of a mission.
I think GOG should check the game out, release a new build. I think I can get my original 2 CD version + XP patches to work better than this release. I know that has worked without issues in the past.

They still shouldn't have released it without telling their customers about various possible problems. I mean, they do test their releases, don't they?

It is a shame that GoG pushed this one out in such a creaky state. It sets a very bad precedent considering that all of the games I've purchased here are pretty much ready to go.
I'76 (and the rest of the Mechwarrior 2 engine powered games, with the exception of Heavy Gear) definitely deserve a comeback, but it also deserved a better resurrection than this. I'll hang on to my disk versions for now since GoG didn't do much other than fix the old 16-bit install routine, move the music from the CD, and include a GL wrapper.
AVA-Bob Bitchin'