Hi there. I have the exact same 'problem', which is in no doubt caused by my very old GeForce2 MX 400 card, which is not DirectX 9c compatible I'm told.
It's a different problem, but yes, that would cause missing textures (though ships will at least be painted the race color rather than being flat white).
Enhanced ship rendering is only an option in DA 1.6+.
At any rate, the issue is inherent to your lack of a DX8+ video card. You can try the workaround described in reply #2 of
this thread if you want to try and get textures working without buying a new video card, though, but I can't guarantee that'll work.