Not quite willing to do that yet, once I start walking down that road I know Im gonna end up formatting/reinstalling everything just in case
But I have some good news to share with you good folks, the console/menu problem disappeared just 2 minutes ago, here's what I did:
* created a Radlink shortcut, set everything to a mix of performance/quality
* started the game, got incredibly laggy in the load menu, reset time
* put all radlink options on performance, lag even worse - reset time again
* put AGP to auto in BIOS, then turned AGP OFF with Smartgart and voil