Hum I might be missing something but I have not had any problems with the game at all but it sounds like you guys are haveing problems with the ATI vid cards? I use a 9700 ATI all in wonder and its been working fine with 1024 textures and with 4X anisotropic filtering and no AA and all games setting are on max. I have a AMD 2500XP clocked to a 3000XP and 1 GB of duel channel Ram.
I use Omega drivers 2.5.04 and not stock ATI drivers.
There are newer omega drivers that are out but theses seem to work well for me. I have not tested the latest Omega drivers but I will and see if they are better than the ones I am using. When I tested them 5 months ago I found that the latest drivers where not always the best you have to test them and see what works best for you. if you want here is the link for the
Omega Drivers Omega makes drivers for Nvidia also.
I would say any vid card with less than 128 ram on it will have problems running most newer games. I also found that Freezing of fps is mostly do to system stressing and heat issues mainly. Make sure you check the fan on your vid card they dont last that long and this my be a problem that you would have with freezes. The fan might be slowing down at times do to over stressing.