I bought Gothic 3 more because I remember having a relatively good time with it. I tried installing it to see how it performs on my new computer and when it did run, it ran as smoothly as possible (on max settings).

However I still get two-second freezes every time I run across the map. And this doesn't happen every 15 minutes or so (which wouldn't be a problem), it happens several times a minute and it's annoying.

Does path 1.7 fix this?

I'm not sure, since I didn't have the same problem, but, I did have a different one as shown by the pic below (that "dialouge" never went away) then I installed a newer patch, 1.73 to be exact and that cleared up the problem for me, so it is worth a try to see if the patch will fix your problem too. I am currently trying to download the 1.74 patch, just keeps timing out or stopping on me right now though, still 1.73 is working fine as far as I can tell. I wish you luck! :)