Freezing every half sec, for 10 secs in games

[doctoe2260]

Hi guys, wonder if anyone can help me identify the piece of hardware giving me trouble.
I've recently built this little beauty

Athlon64 X2 4200
1gb GEIL 4-4-4-12 Memory
Gigabyte GA-M55PLUS-S3G mobo
400 Gb sasung sata 2 drive
BFG 256Mb 7600GT OC graphics card
Win xp Pro

When I first built it all was good, however, when I installed X3 reunion (xamas prezzie), I had problems. The game would play like 5 frames, then freeze for 10 seconds, then play another 5, then freeze , Thought is was the game but ALL games are doing it now! I've tried patches, latest graphics/directx drivers, reformatting and re-installation. BFG asked for voltages from PSU but havent got back to me yet, any ideas would be great - sorry for the essay!
Cheers

 

[Joe42]

What psu is it?
Have you tried lowering the graphics card to stock speeds?
Is the system all at stock?

 

[ipuk]

When it does this can you see high disk usage, i.e. constant HD Light on case? Does it get any worse/better with different drivers? Do you notice any speed problems within Windows itself, watching movies/dvds etc?

 

[krisboats]

Don't suppose its pagefiling on the hard drive is it? How big of a page file cache have you got allocated and maybe look at getting 2gb ram. Does it stop if you turn the graphics options down?

Mine does a similar thing but less frequently. I've come to the conclusion its because i don't have enough ram and its using the hard drive too mcuh.

 

[Mp4]

Have you checked your memory in the bios and to see if ist seated correct.