I'm not sure why this is happening, but during space battles and in the galaxy view I'm getting extremley low fps like 1-2 fps on my desktop rig.  The driver settings are all set to let the application decide. In game it doesn't matter what settings I choose I get low fps and I don't think I should be.  This is and one other game GTA IV where I get really bad frame rates.  I've tried the steam support forums and no one seems to be able to help.  Any suggestions?

My system specs are as follows

Windows 7 64bit
AMD Phenom 9500 quad core

MB XFX MD-A72P-7509 BIOS American Megatrends Inc. ver. 080015

8 gigs of OCZ ram part # OCZ2N800SR2G

power supply LSP Ultra 650W ATX power supply

Graphics Chipset Saphire AMD Radeon HD 7850 OC Edition 2 gigs of GDDR5 ram. running Driver Packaging Version 9.01.8-121202a-150272E-ATI beta drivers on clean install. I have run earlier driver versions with same issue.

Toshiba 24 LED display Model: 24SL410U running at 1080p @ 1920x1080 60Hz 

HDD ST3500630A ATA & WDC WD3200AAKS-00L9A0 ATA

All drivers are up to date.

Virus scan and malware scan report clean using MSSE and Malware bytes and Search & Destroy

PS. My Toshiba laptop running win7 64bit, Intel i5 with 8 gigs of ram and a integrated gpu gets close to 60-70fps with the same graphic settings.

anybody else ever had issues with a rig close to my setup. I've googled my brains out trying to find a fix and can't find anything.

Any help in any direction would be greatly appreciated.