I think you misunderstood my post, VFJackal.

I've never had a better connection. I don't get big FPS hits in furballs (although that beautiful Finland-Russia map in the CT did have a noticeable effect).
I live in the UK, and before HTC did all their server moving etc things were ropey. Now that's all complete and v1.11 is out, things have improved considerably.
Sounds like yours is a hardware issue (stating the bleeding obvious, I know

). For what it's worth my specs are:
Athlon Tbird 1.2 Ghz
512 Mb RAM
Hercules Prophet II GeForce 2 based card (64 MB)
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Cable modem (routed to two PCs - both playing AH simultaneously!)
Sorry I can't be of more help.