Framerate problems with shaders on pretty powerful specs

[vdriftfan]

After upgrading to the latest nightly build(as of 25 February 2012) the framerate with almost maximum settings(only view distance is set to 1 KM and no motion blur since it crashes the game) has dropped from 20-30 to 7-20. I have all the new data files(NOT the dev versions though) that are in the Sourceforge SVN repo.
I'm running the Windows build on a laptop with Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Intel Core 2 Duo T6570 @ 2.1 GHz, Nvidia GeForce GT 320M(just a little more powerful that a desktop 9800GT) with 1GB VRAM, 4GB RAM. I have the latest GPU drivers installed v295.73 WHQL(Verde R295 Driver).

I suspect that the problem may lie in the shaders, specifically the car reflections and the ambient occlusion. Turning shaders off makes the game run at 60FPS but cancels everything including shadows. Since I have a decent machine is it possible that the shaders are not fully optimized? Also the new reflections are prettier than those of the front page release.

Also, why is the game running only at maximum 60 FPS with all options set to minimum? Can't it go farther than the screen refresh rate?

Please reply.

PS: I wanted to upload a screenshot but i get an error: "Unfortunately, an error has occurred rendering this page. Please try again later." for http://vdrift.net/Gallery/admin.php