intermittant pauses and strange RAM error..

[spiritfire]

Well, i have a few threads from 3 days ago on this board concerning some power problems. those have all been sorted out now because of a faulty power supply. However, i still have a few strange problems..

SYSTEM SPEC:-
ATHLON THUNDERBIRD 1.2 GHZ
ECS K7VZA socket A motherboard
512 133mhz SDRAM
ATI RADEON 32mb DDR
40.1 GIG HD
Sound Blaster live 1024
12x DVDROM

1. on the ram i bought, there is a sticker clearly stating that the ram is 133SDRAM and i know for a fact that the motherboard supports 133 ram, however, when i change the default setting from 100 to 133 mhz ram within the bios, the computer can never complete a boot and ether hangs during the memory test or hangs within bios. To enable me to get back into the system, i swithced the CMOS jumper to wipe the CMOS clean and then the system seemed to work fine again, but i always get the same error if i try to change the clock speed of the ram. why is this??? (ive tried the ram in each of the 3 cradles on the board)

2. during almost all games (mostly 3d ones) the system pauses for a second about every 3 seconds. so in other words it doesnt necceserally stutter, but pauses alot. i really cant under stand this as when i played the same games on my lowly PII 350 with a voodoo 3, they ran fairly smoothly (albet in a slightly lower resolution). ive tryed 3 different drivers for the radeon - the release that came with the card, the certified update and the beta update. none of which have countered the problem (the beta reduced it slightly but caused a hell of alot of graphics errors in games such as flashpoint,deus ex and I-WAR 2). I'm sure that i should be able to run games such as tribes 2 and insane on this athlon system at resolutions over 1028x'''' without getting a drop in frame rates. incidentally, the systems score on 3D Benchmark 2001 was about 2600 which compaired to what other systems get (such as a P3 750) is a bit **** really.

Any ideas on how to get rid of these problems?? the ram clock is not exactly an immediate threat but the distinct lack of a smooth frame rates in games is very worrying on a system like this..

[HAL9000]

With consistant pauses like that, it could be the CPU getting too hot. Standard questions, did you use thermal compound? What are your CPU temps?

[spiritfire]

yes i do use heat sick compound,there was a generous healping under a removable strip that came with the heatsink (a coolermaster) i cant give you an exact temperature but i would say around 38-42 degrees celcius (slightly warm to the touch). I also checked with a friend who is a technition and hs said that the temps were way below anything to get worryed about.

Any ideas?