This "hack" won't affect graphics performance. If this really does work, it will only decrease the amount of time it takes to load each level, which isn't all that long to begin with.

This game is designed for some serious hardware. If you want to make it run faster, start with a faster video card and about a gigabyte of system memory.

I have a pentium 4 2.27 ghz, 1 gig of memory, 128 meg geforce4 ti 4200. At 800x600 and "medium" quality, the game is pretty smooth, but does get jerky when there is more than one enemy on the screen or nearby.