Okay so I upgraded my PC for a better STO experience:

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
EVGA GTX 570
4GB RAM
Windows 7

Before you ask... all my drivers are up to date with a clean install of Windows.

My problem is shadows cause my system to freeze for a second before resuming a normal high frame rate. These hitches are extremely annoying and are forcing my to shut shadows off AGAIN even with my new setup.

Any suggestions? Is it possible to force DX10/11? STO runs great but shadow performance is TERRIBLE even on a high end video card.

Theirs no way you should be having any sort of performance hitches with those specs :

ofc you are running teh horror that is win7, meaning all your gaming system requirments are almost doubled straight off the bat

don't you mean vista? windows 7 is pretty good for gaming, at least for me.

Honestly Windows 7 seems to be VERY lean running and stable compared to Vista. I've run each since the date of their respective release and found Windows 7 to be better for gaming than any Microsoft OS to date.

this is in the release notes as a bug in the nvidia drivers
 GeForce 400 Series: Star Trek Online–the game pauses on and off. [677159]
i beleive its a issue with some 500 cards to

KHAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAaaaaaAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnn!!!!! !

Same thing here. 8-core Xeon, 4670 /1GB. 4 GB of Quad Channel memory... same exact thing...