845 Ultra - Slow / Lags

Question

I always had a weird feeling about my computer , and i realized that there may be a problem since i bought a Visiontek GeF4 Ti 4200 128 mb DDR a week ago. (I bought it cuz i tought my GeForce 2 MX 400 was sorta  lagging) .
Compared to my dad's computer , who has a:
Celeron 1.7 Ghz 400 fsb.
256 Mb DDR 266 Ram
Geforce 4 MX 440, MSI 845PE
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
a Maxtor 30 Gb 7200 RPM (SLIM)
Realtek NIC
WinXP SP1
mine is significantly slower:
P4 1.6Ghz
512 Mb DDR 266 Ram
GeForce 4 Ti 4200
MSI 845 Ultra
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Maxtor 30 Gb 7200 RPM (SLIM)
Actiontec 56k V.90 H/W Modem
ATI TV Wonder PCI
Realtek NIC
WinXP SP1
I tried removing the modem & the ATI since these are the only things thats different in our systems without success. Also i did install his system the same way i installed mine, Intel Chipset drivers firts. drivers, etc...
Heres the symptoms:
In WinXP, Windows moves slowly, not THAT slow, but they also mess with the other thing on the desktop, like if i move them too fast, all my icons disapear , then reapear one by one, all this is done without even searching on the hardisk. its just like it cant handle all the desktop at once. sort of LAG feeling. And Although we have the same harddisk & ATA 100 controllers, mine is so much slower, on my dad's computer it feels like i didnt even finished to click on an icon and the window appears.  On mine, it takes up to 1 to 5 seconds... With a fresh install of WinXP. it gets sometimes worse. or sometimes , i boot up and its faster (but rarely). i tried to defrag without succes :(   --- The weirdest thing is that games runs OK , loads less faster but in-game playing is aiight.
Is there anything that would have to be done ? Or is it that strange thing i heard about manufacturer using a batch of faulty component and waiting 4 us to send in repair ?
Thanks in advance, any help would be greatly appreciated !

Answer 1

   It's hard to believe it's the video card if your games run normally, which you asserted in your first post(unless we're talking about Solitaire). Action games and simulations, for instance, are drawing, redrawing the screen 10 to 100 times a second, each of which is roughly equivalent to moving the window in terms of the graphic resources required. Play a game where the screen is constantly being redrawn and get a frame rate reading. If these games run smoothly the problem is not your video hardware, it is the way the XP  is configured.
   But be sure that you have hardware acceleration enabled for your video card. It seems that the CPU is being called upon to do far too much work when you move a window and maybe the graphics are set to run in software mode not hardware. As I said, when I move a window, my CPU usage goes to only 2%, my video card is doing all the work.
   If your mainboard memory is faulty you'll get random  error messages and crashes. If it's insufficient or not being addressed properly, your OS will need to read/write to your hard drive as a substitute. This could account for the slowness as well as the high CPU utilization. Also games store as much graphics info in the video cards own memory for speedy frame drawing and maybe this is why the games run smoothly and the 2D Windows desktop does not.