If you're not currently using the MediaVP files, that's would be one reason why there's not much difference. A lot of the enhancements are in the upgraded models and effects, and some of them reportedly don't work at all in D3D mode, and will crash the game. I don't know what else would prevent the skipping effect. Try making sure things like AA and AF are off in your drivers, make sure your audio is set to Generic Software, as other settings are known to cause trouble, kill anything else that might be making use of heavy I/O such as file sharing, etc. If your video drivers are up to date, maybe check things like motherboard chipset drivers, audio drivers, etc, especially IDE drivers. For a laptop that might be a bit difficult but for a desktop it should be manageable. Other than that I'm out of ideas. That's just what I would do if I were running into an issue like that.
