Games sometimes stutter

[DJ Dodgy]

About a week ago some PC games started to stutter. It was fine up until then.

Call of Duty in-game stutters when a new map is loaded and after a few minutes seems to get better.
Also the new Broken sword game sometimes is ok, but all of a sudden starts to lag/stutter Heres my specs

Win XP sp2
AMD 64 Atlon 3400+
ATI radeon 256MB
1 GB RAM

I know it could be many things, but could someone give me some info? The fact its only just started to happen could be a setting out of place?

Thanks, DJ.

 

[justinone]

ram issue i think, i had that with 256mb ram. Maybe your RAM is bad or dying. I upgraded to 2GB and now its perfect.

 

[DJ Dodgy]

Thanks for the advice. I decided to open up my PC and inside, it was covered with thick dust! After a few hours cleaning everything, the stuttering has stopped!

 

[justinone]

OK lol yeh, dust is a killer. try to clean it out once a year or so.

 

[twite]

try to clean it out once a year or so.

Not once a year...once a month is pushing it