I just started playing BG and when I play the game, it performs annoyingly laggy and slow. It freezes for a moment after virtually every action, occasionally freezes and loops the music for a couple seconds, and in general shows poor performance. I am unsure of the exact system specs, but this computer has had no problems before in running IWD and IWD2. How can I speed the game up?

I had a similar problem and had to reinstall the game and it seemed to work fine apart from when casting spells like stinking cloud and such like then it would go soooooooooooooo slowly.

just another thought but in the first instance I think I had done a minimum install and changed it to recommended. If memory serves correctly,it has been such a long time,do you not have the option in the configuration to choose the system that the game is running from?

Do a full install.

Tips:

..) Do a Full Install.
..) Disable 3D Acceleration.

only disable it if you have TotSC installed. Otherwise, if you disable it, the hand pointer will leave behind 'imprints' when you move it. You can safely disable it in BG2, however.

You can also try increasing the cache size in the config, it works for me :D

Hmm. Well, something seems to have worked. Thanks

must have been the cache size ;)