To be fair, Win 7 is NOT listed as a compatible OS... That being said, the game doesn't work very well on my Win7 rig either and it sucks :(

Strange, I have a fairly modern PC and have no issues whatsoever with this game. My specs are AMD FX8120 (Black Edition) GeForce 430 GT, 6 gigs ram Windows 7 home 64bit, using realtek onboard sound. And for the record...I installed it in the default install path.

FWIW, I'm having no trouble on a Win7 64bit system either. i7 Q820, 16GB, ATI FirePro M7820.

Issues like this are almost invariably driver-related. More specifically, driver settings. Try setting every single setting in your Nvidia driver control panel to application-controlled or off. Then, if that helps, you can re-enable them one-by-one until you find the culprit.

I don't have this issue, though, because i always run my system in an XP/7 dualboot config. Makes for really versatile compatibility. :-)

Know what worked for me? Setting the "App can handle >2GB addressset" flag using CFF Explorer. Doesn't work with every older game though.

Could you explain how exactly this works? My PC knowledge is rather limited, I’ve never heard of CFF Explorer or how to use it, but I’d really like to play Sacred with a somewhat smooth framerate.

I have the original Sacred game myself and could not get it to run on Win 7 64 bit. I have seen some straight up no run situations with GOG games, but it has only been occasional. Sorry I have no answers to this question. Just giving you a heads up that you are not alone.

My (a little bit outdated) System is:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (2x 3 Ghz)
Ati Radeon HD 5750 1GB (it was just midrange when it was actual)
2x 2 GB + 2x 1GB RAM (in total 6 GB)
Windows 7 Professional - 64 Bit

and I never experienced any Performance problems (stuttering for example) with this game, I even enforced MLAA Anti Aliasing (other Anti Aliasing Filters produces little artifacts). Sometimes I even run ressource consuming software like Windows Media Center in background on the other screen.

Whether I am just lucky or the problem isnt directly the game itself, but something with your system (maybe an incompatibility with another installed software or an setting, especially of your graphics card).

Just chiming in saying that adding the waitretrace option to my settings config and unchecking the visual themes option on the game improved my framerate.

My girlfriend couldn't get it to run at all on Windows 8 though, which is a shame.

This is kind of funny to me.

I've been playing Sacred 1 for years. I've had it and played it a lot since it first came out so long ago. I've played it on like 6 different computers, ranging from different software and hardware parts and companies, Nvidia, ATI, AMD, Intel, Windows XP, Windows 7, etc. I've had all the versions of the game, the original disc, the gold version disc, the original gold master(I have friends that give me their drm free versions from within the company), and etc.

Now in all those computers, with all the different parts, the game ALWAYS ran slow when I was zoomed fully out. I always thought it was the game engine. Sometimes games will run slow, and it has nothing to do with hardware, I thought this was one of those games.

It's like Prince of Qin, to this day I try to find ways to make it run better when it comes to frames per second. The original poster says they can get Sacred to run fine fully zoomed out, yet I never could in all my years on so many different computers. I find it interesting, I wonder why that is!