Sorry to hear that. But it did look rather "flashy" in the demo preview movies we've all seen. One could assume pretty much by watching the videos that it would not run well on older machines.
On a brighter note, my arcade comp cost under $200 including shipping from Tigerdirect.com which included an AMD X2 4200+, 2GB of ram and a 160GB hard drive. It also included the case and 500w power supply. Has been running great ever since, and that was about 8 months ago. It will probably be even cheaper now.
You would just have to decide if this new FE is worth the upgrade or not. But keep in mind, by upgrading you would also gain other benefits besides just being able to run this front end.
Last but not least, the software is still in beta, which is a good thing, so that they can iron out the majority of the bugs. Perhaps this issue will be ironed out in future releases? But so far, I think they are steering in the right direction. Also keep in mind that this software is FREE which means the authors are not doing it for profit. So let's not be to harsh on them.