You guys know what's weird? I found a reply in another thread here that recommends disabling the Desktop Window Manager Service:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1335592

I went through that and my framerate DOUBLED. Seriously. It's running mostly fine now (a little laggy in certain places, like fates, but not bad at all). From that I gather that that specific service is probably more CPU intensive than it needs to be, and while an upgraded CPU wouldn't have a problem, I'm going to have to disable that service to run XIVARR decently because my CPU isn't great. Which makes a lot of sense.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and input!