it should be. Sins itself requires a 1.8 GHz single/dual core processor and I think 1 GB (2 on Vista) to run.

Eh...

I guess what I'm getting at is that my GPU doesn't like rendering complex stuff. When I played Age III (can't get it working again at all, though, for some reason), I couldn't watch naval battles because of all the particles and smoke. Does Sins have a lot of graphic-intensive instances such as this?

It can yes if you zoom in and watch the battles. If you stay zoomed out till you see is icon then its not as bad. Also to help dont use the autopin features. Empire tree is FPS hog. Also dont attempt large maps with 10 players.

Oh boy. Well, I guess I should have expected that given that my processor alone is barely at minimum.

One thing, could you explain the Autopin features and Empire tree? (I'm assuming the latter is a tech tree with a ton of high-poly ships or something) Remember, I haven't yet gotten this game. Is the autopin feature something key to playing well or something? Some hotkey or something?

The Empire tree is a scroll down list that can show everything in your empire...all your ships, friendly ships, enemy ships, structures, planets....everything. Autopin is an option you disable that 'pins' certaint things on the empire tree so they always shows up. If you disable it less is shown on the empire tree, so its less your Computer has to draw and keep up with. Its not need to play 'well' I dont use it so I have it shut off as much as I can. But others use it alot. Either way keeping it trimmed and having only what you need pinned will help your computer. I noticed a huged differenece in FPS when I killed my empire tree to the bare bones. Especially in huge games with 100's of ships and 10's of planets under my control.

Never knew about the Empire Tree thing...gotta try that sometime after my computer upgrade. I only used that part for keeping an eye on my capitals anyways.

You really should give it a try: It's much easier to give attack orders against specific ships using the tree! Try to shoot down specific ships when two big battle balls are on screen - you won't be able to pick your target otherwise! It often makes moving to the point of action entirely unnecessary and thus makes managing your forces in combat much easier.

Screet

You could try downloading the demo to make sure it will run okay. You may not be able to get to large battles with it, but its probably more of a memory issue rather than a processor issue if it only causes trouble with large fleet battles.

You can still use it for battles. B/c you cant get rid of it 100%. If you cut it down the bare bones all that will show up in the emipre tree is the planet you have selected. Or if you have ships selelcted it will show them as long as you have them selected. So you can still use it for battles if you select either something in the grav well your fighitng or the planet itself. But if you dont ahve anything pinned or selected then you have no empire tree!  But the key no matter how much you use it is to keep it trimmed. Only pin what you must, if you let the game autopin everything and you play a long large map it will kill FPS while in battle or moving ships around if your zoomed it. Its not so bad if your zoomed out but it does make a difference. For me I went from 10 FPS while watching a battle zoom moderaltly in to 40 FPS after the empire tree trim.

*facepalm*

Sometimes, the most obvious solutions are the easiest. I'll just DL the demo and see how it runs -- thanks for the idea!