WoTG Cutscene Lag

Hi all,

I've got a couple questions I wouldn't mind some advice on. For the past two years I've played FFXI on a laptop with the following specs:

LR R500-C.CP01A9
Windows XP Home
2046MB RAM
Intel Core2 Duo 2.20GHz processor
DirectX 9.0
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS graphics card (512MB) / 6.14.0011.5686 driver

I love my laptop; for the most part it plays FFXI exceptionally well. Up until recently I didn't get any cripplingly bad lag, even in areas like Einherjar or Dynamis.

However as of late I've had a few problems. I've started to lag in some really odd areas. Nashmau for one, gives me either 29 or 20- FPS depending on where I'm looking, with or without masses of people. Most prevalent though is in some of the WotG areas and more specifically WoTG CSs. Windurst S lags me bad just after the gate near the home point, however Windurst of the present does not. I figure that the zones are probably created graphically different, which brings me to my other point.

A lot of WoTG CSs really seem to take a toll on my computer. For instance, the one I saw recently was *spoiler!* where Shantotto saves a group of soldiers from Windurst from an army of Quadav and Gigas. In the cutscene the Quadav created a lot of dust while walking, and Shantotto proceeded to cast lots of Flare II esque magic. During all of this my FPS dropped to an abysmal 8. I've never had such a low number.

What I'm wondering is if everyone else generally encounters a good chunk of lag in WoTG CSs too. The graphics seem to be of a much higher quality and detail than anything else in the game, so that could be the trade off. Finally, if my graphics card is deteriorating does it do it in something like phases, or will it one day just go from working to dead?

Thanks for your time and I look forward to some responses. :)