first off, here are my specs: Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (Build Service Pack 23790), AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000 3.1 GHz, Nvidia Geforce 8200 on BOARD graphics -256mb, 450 watt psu, 4Gb Kingston pc2 8500 ram, 500Gb Western Digital HD, ASUS M3N78-EMH HDMI motherboard.

I have had this computer a little over a month now and it has done this pretty much since i started playing games on it, which was a week or two later. What happens is i will be playing a game like Half-Life 2 and it will typically run at around 70 fps but after about 20 seconds of playing it will drop down to 3-5 fps for about 6 or 7 seconds then will run smooth for about 15 seconds and do it again. It does this on all games i own and makes it very hard to play them for more than 5 minutes. i pass the recommended specs by far on all of my games and would like to know if anyone else can help me. thanks in advance.Sounds like another process is stealing your processing power.

If you go to Task Manager, are there any process(es) using large amounts of Memory or CPU %age?

And, just to get an idea, how many processes are active?there are usually around 33 running. just a few minutes ago i disabled almost everything that wasn't a system process and got it down to 25 processes. i then tried to play a game and it seemed to help at first, but after about five minutes it was doing the same old thing again. RIGHT then the only thing running over 10k on my memory was svchost, at about 40k.thats about normal but see if the game requires any certain drivers and if so what, also what is the game?

Tan_Zait is in all games, and I've downloaded all the updates i know of for my games. I play mainly FPS but i play some games like Supreme COMMANDER and SID MEIER's Pirates and it does it on them too.If you know how to, take a look inside of your pc and maybe have a bit of a test and see what happens if you change the motherboard, or the hard disk. Try something like that with some spear parts that you might have around the house.

Tan_Zaif your looking for a video card, they often regroup in the vegetable keeper of your refrigerator.

Can we eliminate heat as the problem here? because my Geforce 5500FX was crapping out on me in a few games in a manner similar to what you've described, and the problem turned out to be that my GPU fan failed.I can confirm about the heat thing...

Even though you say it is new, is it possible that your CPU is overheating, changing stepping or something, and severely affecting performance?

otherwise it sounds like a bottleneck, not a lagIS YOU Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition ORIGINAL BECAUSE THE CRACK USE FOR THAT CAUSE A PROBLEM SIMULAR TO WHAT YOUR DESCRIBING. ITS AN UNAVOIDABLE GLITCH UNLESS THERES A NEW ONE OUT I TRIALED THE SOFWARE PRIOR TO BUYING VISTA.. Quote from: spacecat9 on January 17, 2009, 11:55:46 PM

IS YOU Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition ORIGINAL BECAUSE THE CRACK USE FOR THAT CAUSE A PROBLEM SIMULAR TO WHAT YOUR DESCRIBING. ITS AN UNAVOIDABLE GLITCH UNLESS THERES A NEW ONE OUT I TRIALED THE SOFWARE PRIOR TO BUYING VISTA..