Issues, Workarounds & Localization

Hello.

I was doing a mission in 0.4 when I saw 2 pirates enter the system. I knew what was up but figured I wanted to give PVP a go after years of inactivity. Now, I got a high end connection and a fairly good computer and can run the game flawlessly, but when they decloaked the game froze and would not respond in any way. In fact I had to log off windows 8 and log back on.
I got a XFX Radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 card but this doesnt seem to be enough? There were only about 5 npc's and two other players in the system so there really werent much going on on the screen.

I dont understand why the game would freeze just because of player interaction, but in any case it makes the game unplayable. Anyone have any ideas?