Eve-Online Problems

[digitalmicron]

Hey guys I wasn't sure where this thread would go so don't yell at me if I got it wrong..

I've been playing eve online for a couple of months now and I love it. Well that being said I've been running into some major lag on my computer. I don't get what's going on. So I thought I'd ask the super smart people of tom's forum to see what they say.

Here are my PC specs to begin with:
Pentium D 945
Evga 650I Ultra Mobo
4 GB 800 Mhz Ram
420 Watt toughpower PSU
9600GT 512 MB video card.
Dual Monitors 1 is a 22" widescreen and the other is 19" widescreen
Vista Home Premium (Fresh Install)

Here are the recommended specs from their website:

# OS: Windows® System XP / Vista
# CPU: Intel Pentium® IV 2 GHz or AMD XP 2000+ MHz
# RAM: 2048 MB
# HD space: 8.0 GB
# Video: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 7950 or higher, ATI Radeon X1900 or higher and Similar chips from other manufacturers

Now I had a few questions... Everytime I play this game the task manager CPU Usage meter goes all the way up to 100 % during gameplay. That being said do you guys think that could mean I need to upgrade my CPU. I was wanting to get a new wolfendale processor anyways so does anyone think that could be the problem.

Next question... Is my video card good enough to run a dual monitor setup??? Meaning I run the game at 1680x1050 on my 22" monitor and I surf the web on the other. I was wondering if the way I got my setup was slowing down my system...

Last question... Does anyone think it might be the PSU??? My PSU doesn't meat the minimum requirements for my video card but for some reason work fine. Been running strong with the video card in my system for 8 months.

I thought it might be spyware or viruses so I did a complete OS re-installation.

I know I sound like a noob but I'm actually a certified computer technician. I just can't afford alot of new components because my wife just had a son so. I figured I could ask some questions to see if I could get some heads together so see if we could fix my problem. When I say really bad performance I mean it goes from 80 FPS sometimes to 10 fps in the same areas other times.

Well thanks guys in advance for the help.

Digital

 

[Naw-yi]

what processes are running? and have updated drivers, all. patches?

i run the game with high settings, 1280x1024 w/p4 2.53, x1650pro, xphome, 1024mb ram, dsl 3mb down 512 up.
cpu does go to max then levels out at about 90% and back and forth. i get no stuttering.

also, they have their servers updated a few months ago to stacklessI0, and run now 64bit. so even better for those w/64bit os, cpus.