For the past month or so my computer seems to be much slower than usual, even when running through tabs on FireFox or when MSN notifications come through they seem a tad laggy.

Playing Gunz the graphics seemed a bit bung (as in lagging behind), I mostly thought bleh nothing serious.

The other day I went out and cleaned all the dust bunnies out of my comp, fans, cpu fan and heatsink, mobo, nooks and crannies etc to find that my motherboard is reporting my cpu as being 70-80 degress celcius just in the BIOS :| (motherboard temp is around 25-30 which is normal).

And today I went to play MOHAA (which I used to play with absolute full quality settings without any screen/game or net lag what so ever) and today I had to put the settings all down to half quality and it still lags incredibly......

Does anyone know what on earth could cause this?

There hasn't been any hardware changes or major software ones so other than some kind of damage or weird settings crippling my system I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on .

It would have to be your ram, since your playing heavy graphics loaded games, your ram is being used up for that.

For that I recommend downloading RAM Def to help clean up your ram.

Next you would need to delete any software that you don't use anymore. Then defrag your computer, do a registry defrag as well. Also you use Disk clean to clean out your computer.

if your using an old gfx card you should upgrade that and even upgrade to at least 1 gig may be 2 gigs of ram.

Then of course delete any spyware adware that could be installed on your computer. in which I recommend downloading spybot it gets the job done.

Also I would try out Advance system optimizer, it does exactly that, it optimizers your computer for the best performance possible.

With these suggestions you should see a better performance in your computer.

Not sure why the ram would be a problem, the usage has been consistent for over a year (so I know exactly what is running) and I do sometimes scan for spyware and viruses but I never have anything, just the occasional cookie.

The graphics card is a GF5500 with 256mb memory, it's not a powerhouse but it had no problems running my games on high graphics without fail or even a single noticable jerk and now all of a sudden they jerk like crap on half the quality settings.

Even from a re-boot when the ram should be cleared it's still the same and my cpu temp has me worried, it would explain the major slow down.

I don't know of cpu temperature affecting cpu speed like that. How old is your computer? It could be the fact you have an old computer and hte parts just not handling it anymore.

Besides ram causing the gfx lag it could be your internet connection as well, usually a slow connection does this. So you would have to upgrade your connection or in my previous post upgrade your ram. Those are the only two problems that I can think of that would lag your computer gfx's like that.

Oh it's not just the graphics, the computer as a whole is noticably slower, but alot of graphics is affected by CPU, if cpu is slow the graphics can't possibly be updated and displayed quick enough.

I had 36 ping on MOHAA, but the screen was so laggy I couldn't keep up with movement .

If my CPU overheats too much it might underclock itself so it won't go too far and burn out, so that could be what's holding me back but I have no idea why the temp has jumped dramatically all of a sudden.

Hi You have not mentioned the config and details of comp OS etc...

You may try running a scan on the HDD. Hope it's not developing the bad sectors.

Look for the processes/threads that are taking majority of CPU or memory utilisation.

You will have to take a step by step approch to diagnose and resolve the issue.

Windows XP Home SP1

Celeron D 320 2.4ghz

768mb combined Kingston ram (512mb and 256mb module(s)).

GF5500 with 256mb ram (fairly new)

Onboard Audio (SoundMax).

Asus P4P800 (around about, I can't remember the id exactly).

and 80gb Western Digital drive (fairly new).

The motherboard reports the mobo temp as around 25-30 but cpu at 70-80 last time I checked (earlier today).

No spyware, no viruses, only applications installed that I need, file paging is setup for as optimal as it gets.

I think I might just overclock the processor and see how long it will run .

Are you sure that your computer is is clean of spyware, junk, temperory internet files, adware etc? Also Check the cpu graph and RAM graph in task manager and see which processes are eating up more memory. Some times a corrupt program file can quietly run in the backround and eat up memory to slow your computer. As you said it was running quite well before I doubt its a hardware problem. It wont hurt testing your ram to see both modules are working. you can chek that in the Bios.
Another way to speed up this is to de fragment your hard drive if it is more than 75% full.

I usually keep my drive with plenty of space unless needed and I defrag quite often.

Not so long ago however I was recieving BSOD's when defragging or trying to rar something big but since I cleaned out the dust bunnies it's been fine, which is another thing that has led me to believe an over heating problem.

It sounds a bit crazy..but open the case up and look at your fans..they could be full of dust making them overcook your CPU or GPU.a good tip is to use a clean household paintbrush and use that to dust out the fans and coolers..then use a vacuum cleaner to get rid of the dust at the bottom of your case..please do this with the power cord out and the pc switched on so it drains any capacitors..you want to avoid any static dischange so use the plastic hose to do this not the metal part of the vacuum..

I know my pc gets SOO dusty inside so I clean it out once a month..my house is messy u see
Cats+children generate a lot of fluff that gets sucked into my pc via the fans it seems..

Marky')