Laggy text(at least on low-end computers)

I'm experiencing significant framerate drops whenever there are many lines of text on the screen. This seems to happen mainly when I have the chat box open or when I'm viewing my character's detailed stats(C menu, I think). My framerate is about 60 when I'm not in combat, 30 when I'm fighting monsters, ~10 when I have chat open(viewing all 15 or so lines), and ~6 when I have both the detailed char stats menu and chat open. I was not fighting monsters when I got the 10 and 6 fps with the menus being opened. The lag seems to get progressively worse as more lines of text are displayed.

My system specs are:
Windows 7 32-bit
Radeon HD4350
AMD 3.1GHz dual-core
2GB Ram

I am using ATI Catalyst drivers version 10.9

Anyone else having these issues on similarly low-end hardware?

Edit: After messing around a bunch, I'd like to point out out that on my most recent playing of PoE, the text lag was gone. I'm not sure if it'll come up if I start the game up again or not. The setting I was messing around with was ATI's Catalyst AI setting, which I set to standard(it was disabled before). Also, below I said that my brother was having the same problem, but apparently that wasn't true; his text did not cause lag.

My only suggestion is to disable global text unless you need it urgently.
sorry i can't be of any further help!

Turned off global and trade chat for now. My brother with the same exact hardware and driver version as me is also having the same issue.

I can't be the only one getting this issue. Is anyone running the game fine on a Radeon HD4350, or even another low-end AMD card like the HD4250? Are low-end nVidia cards like the 9400GT having this problem? Is anyone else running this fine with 2GB ram? My exact processor is an AMD Athlon II X2 255 3.1GHz(dual core), incase it's CPU-related.

Also, I should add that having the chat box open(full of text) brings my fps to ~10 regardless of what scenario I'm in. So no matter what fps I'm getting (60 or even 20), opening the chat box full of text will drop me to ~10.

Any responses would be appreciated.

The chat text rendering is known to cause a significant framerate hit, even on rather powerful machines. It is not specific to your hardware it happens for everyone. I am sure it is on GGG's list of things to improve.

In the meantime you might want to lower your graphics options to try to increase your minimum FPS a bit. Shadows and anti aliasing generally come with the greatest performance cost.

Thank you very much for your reply.