Any plans on optimization?

[Ava]

I would say thats because of your CPU, even though its at 3.2GHz an i7 has features that help to improve performance, like turbo boost (if its needed) and hyperthreading, which your CPU doesnt.

The Q9550 is more powerful than the low end of i7s, the only CPUs worth upgrading to would be a hi end i7 or i5 and I can't justify upgrading my mobo + cpu with the current games on the market. If this game requires a high end i7 just to be able to play smoothly on Standard settings, then that's a serious design flaw. I know people with significantly worse computers than mine claiming to run on higher settings just fine. This would indicate a serious optimization issue.

Your choppiness is due to the weak HD5850. It just can't handle this many polygons in crowded areas. With my HD5870 I get 60 fps most of the time. If I play fullscreen and use Crossfire I always get 60 fps.
You can set everything to highest except general drawing (8) and AO. There isn't much difference since the polygon count is the same.

Perhaps you can shed some light on this then. I have a friend who plays using a Geforce 460. According to the benchmarks (i'll let you Google them, they are everywhere) a 5850 performs higher than a 470 (one model above the 460). This friend has his settings all set higher than mine and claims to not have any sort of choppiness at all with a standard HD and a comparable CPU (IIRC he's using a low end i5). How could this discrepancy be explained?