JW, I feel your pain! I used to play this game at med graphics and it was smooth as silk on a weak laptop. Then, I started playing it on a gaming desktop system I paid $2000 for. It was still outstanding! My problems started when I installed the Oct2008 patch. Well, I had to make some adjustments and I couldn't use the high settings for the water. I was running it well with Win7 64 and switched to Win8.1. It was still pretty good. But, when that Win10 Anniversary update hit, it was like 4 frames per second. After struggling for months, I put the game away.
Now, I just installed WOV on this computer which I found in the dumpster. It's a Dell OptiPlex 3010. It has an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3201 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) and 16 GB Memory (Crucial). I just upgraded the memory from 4 GB as I forgot about doing the upgrade earlier because it was just so much faster than the previous ASUS CM5571 with an Intel Pentium E5400 / 2.7 Dual Core processor and 6 GB memory. I'm running a 1TB SSD and I have an AMD Radeon HD 5570 Graphics card with 1 GB Core Clock at 650 Mhz Memory Clock at 667 Mhz. Absolutely AMAZING graphics performance! I am running in Compatibility Mode Windows XP (Service Pack 3) with video resolution 1920x1080 32 bit. There are absolutely no studders or jaggies. I can't wait to try the SF2 Sims.
Then, I installed the Oct2008 patch, and it started to just crawl again! I don't know what it is. Perhaps too many individual trees for the terrain. It's worth noting that after the patch, there became available a setting for aspect ratio of the display. I should've tried to set that back to the 4:3 to see if that worked but I didn't think of it.
I've re-installed the base sim for now and will enjoy it like this. No YAP! The sim is still very fun in its base form. BTW, I'm running in XP SP3 Compatibility mode. The only issues I still have are a sluggish mouse and an occasional CTD. I'm good with that. I'm hoping the SF2 Win10 works well.
Robert "Qwick" Wicker