I got the black shadows until I turned on Catalyst AI. Seemed like a bug without having the AI on, but I still got pauses within the game when I was playing it.
The pauses and lag have happened since I played BF2 on Vista, even on the 1950xtx I had the same problems.
As for AS5 on the video card. I put AS5 on it before I put the heatsink back on. Whether or not the temps will change I won't know until tomorrow when I boot my computer up again. My PSU died on Monday so I have to wait until Wednesday when the new PSU arrives. I did get my new "SpotCool" today though. That should be fun to actively cool the RAM.