Video game lag, possible memory leak? display settings?

Question

I just built a new system ($1k gaming rig) for my brother before Christmas. He installed a few games (MW3, WoW, etc) a few weeks back upon receiving the system. He has had no issues with the graphics at Ultra settings. Today, he recieved a few more games, incl Skyrim & Saints Row 3. Natually, he installed and wanted to play it. Both of us noticed immediate lag upon startup and it only got worse in actual gameplay. Then when he switched to other games that had been on the system, he got the same symptoms. I started task manager and noticed that the game was taking up considerable memory and was only climbing, sometimes to as high as 900k before we finally closed the programs. What I noticed though, was after firing up SR3, his monitor would start to auto-configure for display settings, no other games did this. Now, after installing SR3, the lag has begun. So i don't know if I have a memory leak issue, possible bad install or something of that nature with SR3, or if it changed a display setting that is now causing all of the other games to have the same symptoms. Help me out here, I am clueless.

Also, I did run a full virus and malware scan on the system, everything came back clean (Kaspersky 2011, MBAM)

Video drivers are up to date, everything seems to be functioning fine in that dept.

Doesn't happen with any other programs except games, such as WoW and SR3.

And I do pick a "best answer" so give it a good, honest shot.

Answer 1

9 times out of ten serious lag when playing games can be traced back to the video card (a video card with low memory or a video card with a slow processor, can contribute to lag) for example, halo 1 (combat evolved) pc game requires a 32MB video card to run, but to actually run the game at seriously playable framerates, a 128MB or 256MB video card is a better bet RAM and the computer's processor also play key roles in computer gaming but it's the video card that gets most talked about

Answer 2

Do a clean install on the video drivers. Check the corresponding games to see if they have patches out already. Make sure your games are running at native resolutions to your monitor. Open up Task Manager and disable any processes that aren't needed to make the system run.

Answer 3

Have you tried uninstalling & reinstalling the graphics driver? If it's something buggy it's probably best to completely uninstall it and reinstall, rather than attempt one of those "repair" procedures.

Answer 4

What are your specifications?

I'll edit my answer when you add additional details.