Looking through the threads here, it seems like everyone playing EoC with XP has great performance. Mine is pretty bad so far, which is a bit puzzling. The GPU I'm using is a Radeon 5770, and my computer has enough juice to run much newer games (like, say, The Witcher) with no slowdown (at 1920x1200, which is my monitor's natural resolution), so that isn't likely the problem. I've had some improvement by turning all the graphics settings as low as they will go, but that's no fun, as the eye candy is seriously gimped. It doesn't fully solve the problem, either.

By far the worst speed hit I get is when there is a station on screen. With mid-range graphics settings the game slows down to (I would estimate) 10 fps or even less, depending on how many other objects are present. Object complexity seems to be the worst culprit, but texture settings above minimum also have a noticeable negative impact.

Just wondering whether anyone has any ideas, since I've pretty much run out. Thanks.

Crud...forgot to mark the post as a question. Oh well.

What driver version are you using? Recent ATI drivers caused problems with a lot of older games though the latest ones, or the betas?, seemed to have fixed most of it again.

Okay, I'll check that out. I did upgrade my driver recently, but I can't remember exactly how long ago it was off the top of my head. Thanks.

UPDATE: It turns out I downloaded a new driver some time ago, but forgot to actually install it. :)

Anyway, it didn't solve the problem completely, but it improved things significantly. I put all the graphics settings to maximum, and now it runs about like it did before with the graphics settings at minimum. Very good. The space stations still bog things down though.

I'm going to get an even newer driver, since there's probably another one out by now. I'll try it out and report back.

UPDATE 2 (3 JAN 14): Grabbed the newest driver available for my card and system. I'll be installing it when I get home tonight. I have high hopes, but I'll report back whatever happens.

Okay, so updating my GPU drivers definitely helped, but the original problem is still there. It's all about the space stations. A fairly simple one like Blackfoot creates a noticeable-but-not-unbearable slowdown, while a more complex station like Henge creates a very crushing slowdown, below 10 fps, as I mentioned. The moment these objects are off screen, the frame rates snap back up to smooth-as-silk levels.

The stations don't look that complex, so I'm still not sure exactly what the hangup is.

The thing is that when I approach Lucretia's Lair, I see a lot of flickering, so-called z-fighting. I'm not sure if this is relevant to this matter, but can you please check if you experience the same when you have those slowdowns?

No. Actually Lucretia's Lair doesn't give me any slowdown at all. It's as fast as anything else.

The only time I get a slowdown is when a space station other than the Lair is on screen. Really strange. They don't appear to be complex enough objects to cause such lag.