Game Lagging Regularly.

Alright, this is kinda a long and complicated problem that i'm not sure about. Just to point out, this isnt network lag, but actual computer lag. First of all, here are my computer specs.

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+
Memory: 2GB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
Sound Card: Realtek High Definition Audio
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2
Motherboard: Asus M2N-MX SE Plus

A few days ago, i started getting a weird bug when playing *most* of my games. It would play fine for about 5-10 minutes, then start lagging down. Like for example CoD4, it would go from 50 to 5 FPS for about 30 seconds, then skip back to 50 afterwards. Now usually, i would credit this to the graphics card not being able to handle intense drawing, but it kept happening, and even when i was staring at the the floor this issue would happen. It would also happen no matter what resolution, or graphics settings i had the game on. I checked temperatures of the computer and they were within normal limits, and i couldnt see any unnatural processes running either.

Naturally i assumed it was my graphics card. So i switched back to my onboard graphics card, to see if the problem persisted, which they did. I tried updating the graphics drivers, DirectX, as well as reinstalling XP to no avail. Right now i'm pulling my hair out as there seems no obvious solution to this. I'm sure that my computer can handle these games, but it just lags.

Now the only things i can think of that this could be down to, is either the Mobo/Processor/Ram is faulty, or there could be some form of malware.

Anyone have any ideas, i'm actually stumped by all of this.

EDIT: I have actually noticed services.exe pop up once, but i'm not sure if that is related or not. It could have just been routine.

 

Alot of the time if the card gets hot it will do that .
Also check cpu make sure fan is clean and the cpu is not getting hot while playing.
Get all the patches for your games and make sure you have all the windows updates(such as sp3) and the Nvidea graphics card updates.

I am running a amd 64 bit dual core 4800 plus with two bfg 256mg 7800gx cards and let me tell yea I have the card fans running and I purchase a in between fan to keep them cool also moved the my cellar where it is cool but I had the same problem ran the whole gauntlet till it fixed it self .

 

Nope, its pretty darn cool. Has a whopping big fan on it as well.

 

Try repairing your auto updates that may be the services.exe that is poppign up using all your CPU cycles.

 

Test your RAM. I had similar issues and it turned out to be a bad stick of RAM.