Hardware Transform Error

[zarles1]

Hey Guys,
in rather recent builds I realized a huge VPS decrease for my S3 compared to older builds no matter if Atrac 3+ is downloaded or not.
I compared the old gold edition I still have installed with the recent 0.8 build:
In MHFU at the precisely same spot I'm getting 55-60 vps on gold edition (v0.7.6.18) and 40-45 vps (while fixed 30fps) on 0.8.

Besides I keep reading "Hardware Transform Error - Failing back to Software" in red font in MHFU. Nevertheless disabling "Hardware Transform" in the settings leads to a further decrease of 20 vps in MHFU.

To make this clear: 0.8 was not the first version where this problem occured. Also in the late 0.7.6 builds it slowed down + error message.

My settings:
Gold edition:
- Enable Sound - yes
- Vertex Cache - no
- Hardware Transform - no
- Stream VBO - no
- Media Engine - yes
- Linear Filtering - no
- Frame Skipping- no
- Mpimapping - no
- Buffered Rendering - no
- Draw Wireframe -no

- Dynarec (JIT) - yes
- Fast Memory - yes

v0.8:
- Enabled sound - yes, but no Atrac3+ downloaded
- Hardware Transform - yes
- Vertex Cache - no
- Stream VBO - no
- Mimapping - no
- Display Raw Framebuffer - no
- Buffered Rendering - no
- no filtering / scaling enabled
- no frameskip or course

- Dynarec (JIT) - yes
- Fast Memory - yes

I just realized the Media Engine option is gone. Might this be the reason?

Well, do you have an idea of what might be the reason for the speed loss and the error message?