Might be interesting to somebody.

I have spent some time to fix my crashes (have finished the game story meanwhile).

Specs:
- AMD XP 1700@1900
- GigaByte GA-7DXR+ motherboard
- WinFast GF3 Ti200
- Integrated Creative SB 128
- WinXp pro
- DirectX 9
- 512 MB

Required action:
- My motherbord has VIA north & south bridge. Needed to update 4in1 VIA patch. (Use google to find it on their site) This one was the reason for slow graphics even that frame rate sufficed.
- any version of nVidia drivers (same result)
- disabled hardware acceleration from sound setup (use control panel,-> or dxdiag). After that some strange noise appeared. Have disabled music in game and noise was eliminated too. (use options in the game, move music slider to far left - according to MS, this disables music)
- disabled HUD animations (optional - use options in the game)

Problem:
- Cutscenes out of sync with sound.
- Slower movement during game play even though frame rate was 75.
- Random crashes with tendency at landing (usually to desktop, but some times also complete reboot)

Solved:
- Extremely faster game play and cutscenes (same framerates as before).
- Without a crash so far.

Comment:
- If I didn't change the HW sound acceleration, system was still unstable, even though, that I have installed 4in1 patch.

Hope this helps,
Spherical