is it essential to play at low graphics?

[applev]

However If I remember rightly if you just use picmip 16 from default settings you get nice clean textures yet there's still enough shadows/shading to allow easy depth perception.

I agree on this, r_picmip 16 looks very nice.

by the way I'm using an i3 and gtx460 and my framerate stays at 125 yet drops to like 118 for a nanosecond every 4-5 seconds,... hardly noticeable but whut?

Did you do all the usual things, like removing unneeded background programs, or verifying that you don't have viruses, or maybe disabling/changing your antivirus software?

[pikaluva13]

Just for the record, picmip only goes up to 10, but for some reason it's listed as going up to 16. There's no visible changes between picmip 10 and picmip 16. (I still use 16 though :P)