i want to thank the good folk here for the solutions. i have the 5.2 cats installed and did not want to have to go back to 4.2 cats (like i had to for kotor1) i put in the Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1 line and voila! dantooine is running absolutely fine! (wasn't necessary for me to install the 4.11 open gl driver)
thanks a bunch guys and for what it's worth..while, i get occasional game lockups that cause me to have to shut down the program and do a soft reboot, they are far fewer than i had with kotor 1 and the same system.
here's my specs fyi:
athlon 64- 3000
corsair extreme pc4000 ram (512 megs)
sapphire radeon 9600xt (using overdrive function)
(all visuals for AA, fastwrite, textures grass etc enabled. only thing not is soft shadows as per earlier tip)
cat 5.2 driver and control panel
av710 chaintech sound card
logitech 5.1 sound and wireless usb mouse
samung 1740 laser printer (usb)
hauppage pvr usb 2 vid capture
msi neo kt8 mobo
windows xp sp2
benq 1620 dvd recorder
generic 16x dvd player