(This happens especially when playing World of Warcaft.)

Whenever I'm walking into an area for the first time of the load (considering you load every time you switch continents [two continents]) and turning a corner that might introduce a lot more landscape/scenery/etc., my computer will experience an enormous lag spike. They've lasted as long as seven minutes, but are never shorter than 15 seconds. I will also randomly spike out of nowhere during Player vs. Player activity. The problem is also existant and irritating when the track on my media player changes (when I do listen to music during gaming), in which time the computer will totally lock up for about ten seconds (still responding to mouse movement) and not even progressing in loading the next track or the next frame in the game. I figure this is a RAM problem, since my GFX card maintains a nice ~92 FPS when not lagging. The spike carries my FPS all the way down to 0.1 for about ten seconds, then remains at 20 for a few seconds, then shoots to 60, then back to normal until the next spike. So am I right, that it's a RAM issue? If I'm incorrect, what should I do to correct this? (Note that I am assuming it to be a hardware issue.)

It's lack of RAM or poor quality of service from your ISP probably, but you must also remember that you're running additional things in the background, too. What happens if you're not using your media player while playing? Scanned your computer for adware/spyware/viruses lately? What are you using for anti-virus (seen Symmantec cause issues like this)? Running P2P apps while playing?

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Even without the Media Player, the spikes are there. I don't always have a MP running in the background. Never ran P2P with the game because I knew for a fact the comp would never be able to handle it. I don't have any anti-virus, I'm sad to report. My trialware expired and I still have yet to buy any full antivirus. I use Lavasoft Ad-Aware to scan for adware/spyware, but I haven't run it in a while. The problem, however, existed before and after my last scan. My ISP is excellent, actually, they've been great. I get 5+MB/S-ish download and 600+kb/s upload.

So your only suggestion would be to upgrade memory? If that's the case, what memory would you suggest? I've looked into buying 1GB of Crucial memory for about $150 off of their site. Would this be a good move? Are they known to be a good, reliable memory company? I've also heard good stories about Corsair. If you're kind enough to research this, my specs are as follows.

Mobo: Gigabyte K8 Triton (K8N PRO)
GFX: ATI Radeon 9800PRO GFX (128MB)
Processor: AMD64 3200+ (~2.2)
Sound: SB Audigy2 Audio
RAM: 512MB (Not sure about the brand, and was actually wondering if there was any way to check without having to open up the case.)

Anything else you need to know, let me know.

No antivirus software?!?!

Before you do anything, you need to scan your computer!

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/Get+AVG+FREE/lng/us/tpl/v5

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Ran the antivirus, got rid of one worm, ran the ad-aware, removed like 40 infections. Still lagging the same though.

So, RAM it is?

May want to run scans again...you could have back doors that are downloading stuff back into your computer.

Also, run spybot search and destroy in addition to ad-aware.

www.safer-networking.org

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"No immediate threats were found."

Ran Ad-Aware and AVG again. Gonna play a bit and see if it helped. No new detections were found, though, so I don't see what difference it could have made.