It appears my RAM is consuming about 2.32 GB. THe CPU is a little harder to nail down as I am jumping out of the game and monitoring the Task manager. It appears that some of my cores are going between 30% usage upto about 60%.

IN other words all of the components have still enough resources to grab more than they are using.

Is that total or just for Sins? You can see this in the process tab of task manager. I also have a quad core and it always maxes out at 25% for Sins, because it can only use one (or the equivalent of one, not computer savvy enough to know exactly how that works in practice). Of course I could never play games that size even on Diplomacy for more than two hours so...

the huge maps are just promotional features of the game and that goes with the graphics aswell. Sins can't handle itself with the current iron engine.

Exactly, settings have to be turned down otherwise the choppiness and lag will continue till it hits the 2gb limit then crash, (mini dump)...

Edit: Unless you have a super rig like boshimi, then it may not be a problem... 

Try turning SLI off. When its not working properly, it causes the game to feel choppy, even though you supposedly have stable 60FPS.

Additionally, overclocking the CPU might help. 2,8 Ghz is surely not enough, 4,5 Ghz sounds more like it  

First off RiddleKing ... I see you are a who likes to about most things to get your cheers. Now that that has been established ...

I'm sorry you feel that playing 3-4 hours worth of multiple game matches leaves you feeling only like a Demi-God. To each their own. We prefer a beer and pretzels style of game play.

Fast and Faster settings increase the load on the CPU ... to simplify what you just said.

You do realize that at faster game speed, faster ship speed, all of these things means that more movement orders are calculated quicker? Things are finding themselves in range of abilities and out of range of abilities faster than at normal or slower speeds? Simply the calculations per second of ship movement (especially fighter movement) as well as calculations for targets etc due to faster ship movement alone increases CPU load? At faster game speeds trade ships and fighters tend to be more resilient as the DPS stays the same but the ships are in and out of the combat / gravity well (in the case of trade ships) faster than they can be damaged? On normal and slower ship speed settings fighters often get chewed up by flak frigates and flak burst abilities before their supporting fleet gets into combat much quicker, thus reducing cpu load all in and of itself. Trade ships are more often like to be blown up by strike craft and other smaller defensive structures on normal and slower settings as they linger in a gravity well longer and therefore, due to the DPS being the same, actually receive more damage and are more often to be destroyed, lowering load on the CPU.

Pirate fleets on slower settings don't bulk up on slow/normal settings on large maps while on 'raiding missions' against the highest bid player as they leave their base slower and are destroyed before the next wave pours out. On faster settings often you can have two raids seemingly screaming through gravity wells  (one departing the base) while the first finally reaches it's objective intact, unscathed by the system defenses in the other gravity wells it screamed through, where it could have been had it lingered longer due to the DPS being the same). Envoys actually have a chance to do something on slow / normal settings as they can get there and work on raising relationships before your ships are fighting every other ship in existence. With envoys allowing ceasefires and alliances much sooner, ships don't have to calculate firing orders and the like which ultimately lowers cpu load when compared to large faster setting games where the relationship values lag behind due to scalar values and research rates being increased. All of this adds up to mean faster settings puts more cycles, clicks, i.e. higher load on the cpu at faster settings when compared to slow / normal settings.

How many more examples do you want? I can't play a 'faster' game for more than 3-4 hours max (where I have fleet supply and research maxed out) before I run into issues. I can play a normal or slow game up to 25+ hours where I also have fleet supply and research maxed out and surprisingly ... my game does not lag at all whereas during the 3-4 mark on the 'faster' game setting, everything starts to creep to a crawl.

The game was originally designed to be played and was originally optimized for 1x game settings. Anything faster, even if rebellion has been better balanced for these settings, increases cpu load. I would never play a fast or faster game on a large map, or even a 5v5 if I wanted it to be lag free. Only on normal / slow settings, on ANY SIZED MAP, with a max field of players (human or AI) can you play on max settings with a capable PC without any lag as long as you unpin items from your feature tree.

I don't know what else to tell you.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I am saying that faster game speeds increase the iterations and processes that are loaded onto the CPU, therefore inducing 'CPU-caused-LAG' into the game. Every game that I and my friends have played MP over LAN or ICO has seen this be the case. Most of us rock out on max graphics settings and everything. If you take the same sized map, the same fleet compositions, the same big battles, and start duking it out, on Faster game settings with the same situation it lags. On Normal game settings in the same situation with our equipment it does NOT lag.

Haven't read thread, but a simple suggestion: Try turning down gfx settings when playing these 'huge' sessions and see if things improve. I think a smooth play is more important than having the graphics look absolutely pristine (especially since you'll often be looking at the ships from a distance and they'll be just an icon, anyway).