when a spell with a large spell effect is casted on me, or on a person in an area near me my FPS seriously drops, like it's terrible. if anyone could explain what's going on, i'd greatly appreciate it.

system specs:

ASUS EAH silent 4300/4500
512 MB
drivers are 2 months old

Pentium 4 3.0 GHZ (x2) (not dual core)

2 GB of RAM

this has been going on for a while, im just now deciding to ask about it.

Mmm.. as your system specs are much better than mine and I am (most of the time) doing quite well I can hardly imagine its a hardware problem.. but maybe someone else has the clue here..

I can only recommend to turn off other people spell effects till someone has a better option (I know this is quite bad for some classes, and not a very good advice) or maybe check your software..

Would be good too to know if this happens too at high mob rates / player rates in your surrounding, cause they normally should produce as much if not even more traffic as big spell effects (so if its only at the spells you can be almost sure its not your connection fooling you here)

Sorry I can´t give better advice, but maybe these could lead to some clues for people who have better tech knowledge than me.