@Narses
I'm not sure but this problem could be related to SDL.
I suppose drivers of your graphic card are up to date, and that other 3D/OpenGL applications do work.
Which .exe do you run when starthing OA ?
openarena.exe ? openarena-deprecated.exe ? openarena-legacy.exe ?
I'm not sure if each one of these versions can use the same SDL.DLL file.
You may try to rename your SDL.DLL file to SDL.DLL.BAK, and copy SDL.DLL from an older installation of OA into 0.8.1 directory, just as a test to see if it works better

I may be totally wrong, but worth trying
