Tibia/Slow CPU/Takes many resources

I play a game known as Tibia. It has gotten popular throughout the 8 or so years it has been out. It is locatable at www.tibia.com

Now for my problem, when I play the game, it takes up 90-100% of my resources. It slows down my comp greatly like when I try to open IE while playing. It can take 2 minutes for it to finally open. yet my friends that play have no trouble with it and play normally while using other programs.

I recently installed more RAM, hoping that would solve the problem, but it likes to use that up too. I now have 256+512MB RAM. I use SP2 on a Windows XP Home edition with HP Pavilion 553x model computer. I constantly review updates and install them by need, and also clean spyware and adware regularly.

Is there any way to lower the resource usage? Or somehow make it faster?

oh, also, I already checked the Tibia faqs, but it seems to list nothing on the subject

try runing it in win98 compatability mode
right click on the icon >properties>compatability then select win 98 mode
also have you made sure you have no malware or viruses etc on your pc ?

Yes, i scan for malware regularly :) Yes this seems to help some. Is 98 the fastest? I am running XP Home, so i dont know if that helps :P