[Jerom]

Perhaps those backpals you are thinking of are just seteffects.

Those effects lagged my friend to the point where he could no longer move while on NewMain(so he quit Graal =().
You can disable DirecX7, that worked for me. Although since I no longer have a video card of any kind, i dont see any effects on Graal acccept normal backpals =\

If they are backpals, then you shouldn't lag because it's only a different color pics1.png so to speak. You can tell it's a backpal if only the tiles have been changed in color. If everything's that color, it's a seteffect.