Thanks for the advice, but...
I don't use RogerWilco, I definitely have the Detonator3 drivers, I'm about 90% certain I have the latest DirectX drivers (I'll look into it, though), and I always, ALWAYS kill every program in the close program window except explorer and systray before I play ANY game.
I'm not really seeing any buildings dissapear, the game just freezes on me. And this is after I have logged in and joined a H2H game (haven't tried the regular game, yet.)
My system has not once ever had an incident of overheating, and it works perfectly upon an immediate reboot, anyway. Nothing's overclocked, and my graphics card isn't that powerful.
My first inclination was that it might have to do with me being behind a firewall, but if I can connect to a game and even play in it for a few minutes then that couldn't be the problem, right? Or am I wrong?
I do really appreciate the responses I've got, but I think my problem has yet to be solved. ;^)
Thanks again,
Parison