[J3Vr6]

I have all the effects these people put out and I don't get any real massive drop in frame rate, and I have a worse/same system than you:

AMD 2400xp (running at 2000 ghz)
Geforce 2 mx 32 megger
512 meg memory

I consistently get 37-75fps.  The worse it will get is ~20 fps if a Colossus takes on a few cap ships at a time (read: 4 or 6 at a time) and there's fighters flying around with big explosions about.

U can't blame the coders, they've bent themselves backwards making this game better.

[Fractux]

Dump the hi-res explosions, they create a huge hit in performance.