What drivers are you using, my Radeon 8500 also experienced major drops in framerate when at e.g. the plazaa, using the open source drivers. ATI\'s binary drivers are *much* faster, I really suggest you try them. There\'s one catch though, if I\'m not in GL mode, i.e. doing stuff on the desktop, the display just freezes when I perform certain actions (you know, when you can only move the mouse cursor and nothing else works). So you\'d have to switch your drivers every time you are not planning on playing planeshift, which is kind of annoying. Anyway, you should decide for yourself. I even get 15+ fps from the top of the tower with those binary drivers.
