The new patch (curretly beta version availble, final patch probably on Monday) solves a lot of these issues:
No need for the MOD as they put the option to lower the graphic settings in the menu.
Kudos to the guy who worked in order to make the MOD possible as he was the main motivator to make this official
(I am a great believer of "pressure groups")
Besides this, the game now uses well four CPUs so Quad-core is the CPU to have for this game!
~S~