Naw we went through this way back I think. The opening with Sin and everything in Zanarkand was shit slow (probably 10-12fps sometimes jumping up) but once it opened up I was getting 45-50 fps. Certain things really slowed it down like casting Shiva and some fmvs. But random battles worked full speed. Made it to the Calm lands when I did this. I had a special plugin specific to old Intel GMA's too. But yeah still sucked.
My desktop is a Core2Duo 2.9 ghz with 4gb ram and an Nvidia GT710 and can run it at 2x native - just slows down a tad in the Omega dungeon. Of course PCSX2 is much better now though.