Computer Goes into Periodic Lag When Playing Games

[evlarg1]

Hello, a while a back ago I had essentially frankensteined my computer from various parts I found at Fry’s Electronics on a black Friday night. Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon II x2 255 processor, 3100 Mhz, 2 core
ATI Radeon HD 5570
10 GB RAM

Regardless of my incompetence with creating a good machine, when I managed to assemble the computer it seemed to work fine. And so for a good 9 months I was completely content with my machine running all the games I wanted in low-medium settings. I played StarCraft II and Shogun 2: Total War without any problem. Then I downloaded The Witcher, for a while I was able to play it at a consistent 25 FPS on lowish settings but somewhere along the end of the second act the game just dropped into a state of constant periodic lag so I started playing Shogun 2 and StarCraft but they did the same thing. And thus we get to the present problem. Whenever I get into a 3D intensive game (Shogun 2: Total War, StarCraft II, Dead Space, Assassin’s Creed ect) and play it for more than 5 minutes I get this periodic lag every 2-3 secs where my FPS drops from 30-40 to 5-13 for about a sec then jumps back up to normal only to do it again. This really makes all new games that I buy completely unplayable.

First I thought that my computer may be a little dirty, so I opened the bad boy up and game it a good clean with compressed air. This did not work so I decided to get some help.

Initially I went to The Witcher Forums and asked for some guidance. Some people told me to play with the settings and see if my CPU can’t handle the FPS. I attempted this mainly on The Witcher and some other games but had no success. But I did come to a curios phenomenon. When playing Dead Space 2 if I put it on the lowest settings possible (this includes exclusion of V-sync) the problem happens like regular, 5 min in the periodic lag. But if I turn on V-sync it seems to last quite a bit longer, about 10 or 15 min, before the lag starts. Nevertheless this method failed and the guys at The Witcher Forum told me that may be turning off Cool’n’quiet may help. This failed as well. Feeling distraught at the situation I gave up and started playing non-demanding 2D games on my laptops on my laptop.

Later I decided to see if other PC help forums could give me some advice. One of these forums suggested that it may not be a software issue so they instructed me to download HIJACKTHIS. I did so, scanned my computer and posted the logs, they then told me that I had a quite a bit of programs that may be interfering with my system. They referred me to this link:

http://forums.cnet.com/7726-6132_102...sts;msg5331303

I followed the procedure, Downloading the rkill and then scanning my computer with both malwarebytes and superantispyware a couplr of times. I did in fact have a subtancial amount of malware and spyware. Malwarebytes detected 315 problems and Superantispyware detected 175. I cleaned these problems out and restarted my computer. When booted up The Witcher 2 I was surprised to see that it ran a lot smoother and I was able play for a good 10 minutes without a problem, But alas it began again.

Thus, Here I am seeing if anyone can shed some light on my situation. If this is a software issue I have considered completely wiping my hard drive and re-install all the games I’m currently playing. I don’t really mind doing this considering virtually all of my games are in my Steam and GoG account, but I want to try everything possible before I take such a drastic measure. Thank you for your attention and I would deeply appreciate any advice

-DFTBA
Hector