I ran the game quite happily o a Ti4200 for about a year heavily modded and before that SH2, had no probs with loading, usually under 2mins
Get your self this little program if you can it's still free somewhere on the net called "End it All", it closes down all most programs running in the background. Speeds up everything quite appreciably, also if you can get the free version of XP Smoker this little app configures a whole heap of Windows XP settings, it also has a "Game boost tab" Which in effect closes about everything else that end it all does not... I.e put XP in classic mode, and just has system files running......Big boost for running games, plus when you have finished you can just open up Smoker and reset windows by tabbing the disable game boost button...
Hope this helps
Deep six