Well, that's not good. I got the mil horse and v3 both decked out via native and several replicators. Had some lag, but nothing unreasonable w/ my 1GB. Do you both have same OS version? Maybe it is specific to that. I would hate to think that all the mac users are going thru that. Definitely seems like an issue if it happens that badly with that many figures. I have found that I can get pretty bad lag tho w/ preview settings not tweaked. I have had some real slow downs in the past. I only use native unless I import via obj which I haven't been doing lately.

I use opengl as my preview renderer (I think the eovia sw one is the default). The option to use opengl will stick if you set it in prefs under general scene settings, but you will have to set the other options and save them w/ the file because you only have the option of opengl or eovia in preferences. The other option under opengl in prefs is use display lists. To use that or not can also have a serious impact depending on the card.

These are my settings (gourard) actually seems to work better, I find when scrolling I get unpredicatable movement at times in texture mode. Again the textures aren't really accurate so no big deal.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.