Why does this game run like shit on a stick?

[steo]

Okay, so I just got Dark Messiah, I can boot it up and it'll play fine for maybe five minutes by which time my frame rate has dropped to... around ten fps most of the time. I was gradually notching down all the graphics settings to try and make the game more playable, then I hit bottom settings at 1024x768, then I turned the settings back up to medium/high and noticed, at most, a very marginal decrease in frame rate. I've been playing around for a bit and still can't be sure that dropping all the graphics settings actually gives any improvement in frame rate. I installed the patch which may or may not have improved things, I can't be sure.

I'm running:
3GHz P4E (overclocked to 3.6GHz)
1GB DDR400 RAM
X800XT (overclocked slightly)
2 completely defragged SATA HDDs (Dark messiah is on a different drive to the OS)
The bare minimum in terms of running processes


What spec is everyone else playing this on? Any ideas as to how I can maintain a half decent frame rate?

[driver]

I'd consider doubling your RAM. I run it on an Athlon 64X2 4200+, 2GB RAM and a 7800GT and it's as smooth as silk.

[steo]

I did get a RAM upgrade not long ago, but the new RAM had compatibility issues with the old RAM so I eventually pawned it. Even with just one gig of RAM I should be able to run this game on bottom settings at more than ten frames per second, hell it should run pretty well on medium/high settings but it doesn't. I thought I might have an overheating problem but I just checked and the CPU is only at around 65 degrees after playing, compared to 69 for most games.

According to Tom's hardware, my card should actually very slightly outperform yours with max settings on M&M, so I guess that leaves the RAM and the processor, the RAM probably being the weaker link in this case. What bothers me is that I'm sure the game shouldn't be running as badly as it is which makes me suspect that there may be something else going on that I'm not seeing.

I could try switching the gig of DDR400 to two gigs of DDR333 to see if that would make a difference.

[driver]

Dark Messiah has a reputation for being temperamental on certain systems. it shuddered to a halt on my P4 2.8, 2GB RAM, 6800GT because it had issues with my GFX card. I believe that particular problem's been fixed in a patch, but I've read on other forums that it still just doesn't like particular pieces of hardware. I did a quick google for you GXF card and it didn't flag anything regarding Dark Messiah, but perhaps that might be something to look into.

:edit:

I would encourage you to stick with it, though. I'd certainly rate it as one of last year's top games, possibly the best.