Hi Morty!
Welcome back from the Highlands!
I was reading your post about your ATI Radeon gcs and there was an article I read about instancing particularly for ATI Radeon cards while gaming. Here's what it says "
The videoadapter does not support hardware Instancing. This will cause considerable performance decrease. If you have ATI Radeon videoadapter, enable Instancing support in the driver settings!\n\n;"
I don't know if this is relevant to you but might want to check if your ATI has instancing enabled and whether it makes any difference in your fps.
Cheers