Character GFX Bug on 1.7..details inside>

I played for 1 day at 15fps, really liked the look of things, then 1.7 came out and ever since i have been getting a wierd framerate.

When i view out in Mouselook (looking at complete houses and map, NO characters) i get a 10-12fps. But when i look at my own character, plus any others around me, my frame rate drops all the way to 1fps and stays there. A 1.7 character rendering bug?

Wether my graphics settings are at max, or minimum. My frame rates differ not.

It only drops when looking at any number characters and if there is 5 characters the fps does not drop lower than 1, it stays the same fps as if looking at 1 character (with any number of characters in the screen at once).

I would like to know if anyone else has had this version of graphics error with 1.7? So that i am not alone.

Also is this part of graphics error also being worked on?

I have:
64mb ATI RS300 (laptop, equal to and acts like an ATI 9000)
512mb ram
3.2ghz Pentium4

Go to Preferences.
(Adv. Graphics)
[_] Avatar Vertex Program (faster)

Yes, I'm showing that checkbox UNchecked for a reason. Make sure it's NOT checked, save the settings change, and your framerate should perk up again.

That (faster) bit really isn't true for most on-motherboard ATI video chips, even those that can handilly run Doom 3 like my own Xpress 200 chipset.

Thx a lot mate ^^ My fps is now up to 3-5 per sec. Its still low so ill leave it up to the next update to fix the rest