Performance Issues

Howdy all. I've got my (mostly) new system up an running, but there are a few issues I'm having with performance, as in, there is a lack of said. The main problem is in Battlefield 1942. During gameplay, whenever you hit 'esc,' it backs out of the game and into the menu. Well, whenever I hit 'esc,' I takes nearly 45 seconds for it to complete this operation, whereas with my old 1.4GHz T-Bird, it took less than 4 seconds. I would like to know where the bottleneck is in my system that is causing this. Through much swapping, I have ruled out the video card itself as the problem, although I have not entirely ruled out the video drivers. I appreciate any insight that you may have on this issue.
Athlon XP 2500 Barton w/thermaltake Volcano 11 xaser edition
DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra Rev. B
Geil PC3200 512MB DDR Ram, 8/4/4/2.5 (stock timings)
Maxtor 60GB 7200 RPM HDD
geForce3 64MB
onboard sound
onboard ethernet
Lite-on DVD-ROM
Antec True 430

Women--can't live with them, can't have heterosexual same-species intercourse without them.

*bump, for chrissakes*

Women--can't live with them, can't have heterosexual same-species intercourse without them.