*Note: pst-drawfix has been reported to introduce minor flashes/glitches when casting spells
the best alternative to my patch IMO...
open wined3d.exe inside of 7zip
and extract libwine.dll, wined3d.dll, and ddraw.dll from $SYSDIR into your torment folder
( adds a few seconds to the game's startup time, but worth it. )
Brilliant - no other solutions fixed the issue for me, this works perfectly. I can now have spell battles without my laptop grinding to a halt, and indeed the whole game is now snappier.
P.