...And it REALLY shouldn't be an issue at all on my system.

It is, though. And it's really starting to annoy me.

Intro cinematic runs fine, but as soon as the actual gameplay begins...Just as an example, it takes roughly thirty seconds for the words 'Project Eden' to unscramble themselves. Exiting to the main menu is next to impossible as it takes roughly ten seconds to register the slightest mouse movement.

I've swallowed my pride and lowered every setting to the minimum, and it's still just as bad.

For the record, Windows 7, 64-bit

8GB of RAM

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor

ATI Radeon HD 5800

Strange, our specs are pretty similar and I run the game perfectly on the v2 driver. You can try removing your video card drivers and then using driver cleaner and then just install the v2 driver fresh and see if that helps. I'm running @ 1080p, large texture cache, max antialiasing and anisotropic with vsync set to on. My framerate is extremely smooth, I see no texture pop-in and the stability is just perfect. I would think you'd get similar performance with those settings.

Use the ati rage v2 drivers, not the v3. The game's pretty much unplayable with my 5850 with the v3 driver preview. You may also have to fool around with a config file.

I am using V2...

And fool around how with a config file? I don't particularly want to do that unless I know exactly what I'm looking for.

I had trouble getting it to work with a HD 4670 at first as well. The thing that finally got me going in the right direction was using Driver Sweeper to clear out all the AMD drivers and reinstalling the preview 2 drivers. I eventually installed the preview 3 drivers and had a terrible time all over again. I never got the game back to running as well as it did with the preview 2 drivers. I finally had enough and purchased a nvidia card today. Everything is running super smooth. AMD needs to get their act together I'm so done with their lousy drivers.

If you havent already try uninstalling your video car, run driver sweeper and reinstall the preview driver 2 again and see what happens. You may have to execute this process more than once for it to work.

I feel for you. Good luck.