help with system slowdown?

[circaskater21]

so people on some other forum could only help me by saying it was probably a PSU problem or an overheating problem. my issue is that when i play any game (which all worked about 2 weeks ago) and any game, be it morrowind or mass effect 2, will run fine for 1-5 minutes, then just have ridiculous offline lag like spikes for about 45 seconds, then return to normal for about a minute, then do the same again. what should i try ? aside from testing a new PSU to figure out my issue????

AMD X2 6000+ 3.01 ghz
2 G RAM
nvidia ge force 8800 gts
asus m3a78-em

 

[hossdaddy]

it could be the psu. Could be that you only have 2gigs ram, what os are you running? What temps are you seeing for the cpu, gpu and mobo. Are the coolers for the cpu and gpu spining?
Maybe you need to defrag your hd?

 

[Mechawyvern]

^ +1
Also, run memtest ( http://www.memtest86.com/ ) and HDFT ( http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT ). Run check disk on your drive. When was the last time you cleaned the computer? Dust buildup on the heatsinks may be causing overheat issues. Check all this, and report back, and we can help troubleshoot more.

 

[Dangman]

The PSU will not affect performance at all. It's not a PSU issue. Though what PSU do you have?

Now, have you done all the normal anti-virus and anti-malware scans? What anti-malware and anti-virus program are you using? Is this a fresh Windows install?

 

[circaskater21]

i tried a few fresh installs, its all windows xp. didnt help much, everything inside the case looks clean took the processor out the heatsinks good... i heard of some people saying apparantly maybe applying more thermal paste to the processor or whatever could help an issue such as mine? ive been using avast antivirus which seems to be fine... installed that after my problems started happening. cleaned up hard drives and things yes. for anti malware and such i just tried pretty much all of the ones on this websites virus removal guide.

what program should i use for temperatures?

 

[rpchip]

core temperature or open hardware monitor are both free.

 

[Dangman]

i tried a few fresh installs, its all windows xp. didnt help much, everything inside the case looks clean took the processor out the heatsinks good... i heard of some people saying apparantly maybe applying more thermal paste to the processor or whatever could help an issue such as mine?
......
what program should i use for temperatures?

Could be a temperature issue. Speedfan is another temp reading program to use.