However, the performance was improved a lot in b43/RC1, and new releases going back to the levels of b42 isn't a good thing.
I'm not sure what the proper terms for the observed behaviour are, so I am just going to describe what happened in the last 5 versions.
b42: Normal loading time, really poor memory management (garbage collection?). After a few T1 dungeons the game was taking more than 200 MB. Needed a restart after every 2-3 zones visited.
b43: Normal loading time, highly improved memory management. I could now play all T1 dungeons and a couple T2 without reaching 200 MB.
RC1: Same as b43. All cool!
RC2: Loading times increased - starting a new character or loading a game is now very slow. Loading zones or world map is slower as well. Opening up chat log and inventory is much slower - sometimes locks up for a few seconds. Memory performance is fine.
RC3: Slow loading and interface response as in RC2. Memory performance is back to the levels of b42, maybe even worse. Two T1 dungeons and a town visited and I am already up at 200 MB. Playing all T1 dungeons and the first couple of T2 now takes nearly 300 MB. Gameplay performance is now also worse - CPU usage increased and there are frequent "lagouts". The game freezes in the middle of a turn or something and I often find myself dead after sending a new command, because I didn't see all the actions in the turn that froze.
I am sure that optimizing the game for low-end computers isn't a primary goal, but if we can get back the performance of b43 and RC1, it would be great.
Baring the SDL upgrade, in which case the only hope is for SDL to fix it :/