Gaming Lag - Hardware Issue

[CorPoRaTioN]

Hello

I have had this PC for a few years now but i have been playing games like Battlefield 2 and has always ran smoothly at medium res and settings. The last few months, any game is unplayable, its not Internet Lag, is PC Lag

Specs:
Pentium 4 3.00
2 Gig Ram
Asus P5P800 Motherboard

I originally thought the graphics card had gone which was a ATI x800 Pro which is old, so i bought a AGP ATI 3650.
Still with no luck gaming is still unplayable.
Next step, Reinstall Window XP Home Edition, Still no luck.

What hardware could be causing the problem, Power Supply, which is 500 Watt. CPU overheat?
Any help would be great.
Cheers

 

[lucuis]

It could very well be a heat issue. Grab a can of air and clean out the case of dust bunnies. Then try gaming again. You can also Download a temperature monitoring utility like HWMonitor, Realtemp, etc.

 

[boulard83]

+1 monitor CPU temp. the CPU can be throtling cause of overheating. ( your GPU was probably throtling too ... )

Start with this.

 

[CorPoRaTioN]

Thanks, I will try and clean the motherboard and case with air and check temps.
What should the CPU temp be, or should i say anything over a certain temp is too high?

 

[boulard83]

Use CORETEMP to monitor your temp.

 

[lucuis]

Thanks, I will try and clean the motherboard and case with air and check temps.
What should the CPU temp be, or should i say anything over a certain temp is too high?

Under load, anything over 70c is probably too hot. For graphics card temps should not go much over 80c.

 

[AKM880]

The CPU fan may be clogged up with dust which causes the CPU to throttle down if it gets too hot..Clean it out as suggested

 

[sighQ2]

check for shared irq's - esp vidcard s/b on an unshared irq if possible. If you added hardware lately, this could be the cause of irq sharing.

 

[PCKid777]

No one mentioned the no name brand PSU.... Although lack of power generally causes crashes, but if it's not a heat issue... The reason I mentioned this is because I had a generic PSU that started going out on me. Caused a plethora of issues, ranging from game crashes to stutters. Monitor your voltages