I get the dreaded sawtooth delay. Cain't do diddly about it.
Either I gv or quit the game, which is the current situation.
PM if you want an autographed 8x10 of my hairy, to kiss.
Sawtooth means you have something else firing off in the background.
Many simple things to do to change that.
A great start would be
www.blackviper.com and use their Services recomendations to trim down how many Services you have running at all times. (think i'm down to a dozen or so)
Another great tool would be HiJackThis (Trend Micro). When you run HJT it shows everything that is running. Browser Helper Objects, Registry changes, Terminal Stay Residents, pretty much all of it. Do not be alarmed when you run HJT and see 50-100 things pull up. That's actually fairly typicaly for todays systems. The goal would be to try to get that under, say, 10. (I have 2 things that run. Firewall and a VideoCardy thingy). They best way to decide what stays and what goes is to take the 20min on Goggle and see what they are. Generally at the end of the entry line in HJT you will have a xxx.dll, xxx.exe etc. Google that.
(example from HiJack This:
O23 - Service: NVIDIA Display Driver Service (NVSvc) - NVIDIA Corporation - C:\WINDOWS\system32\nvsvc32.exe you would google nvscv32.exe to see what that was)
Just remember that you are not deleting any programs or any such thing, you are just preventing "stuff" from running when your computer boots.
(example: RealPlayer (if you have that installed) is constantly running at all times in the background. If you allow HJT to stop that, RealPlayer will STILL launch when you go to watch a movie etc. It just isn't running all the time in the background checking for updates and waiting for when you MIGHT want to use it so it can pull up a milisecond faster)
Carefull with HJT. When in doubt take the 2min to Goggle the item in question. Also remember less is best, so try to eliminate all the fluff and garbage. DO NOT JUST CHECK EVERYTHING AND TURN IT ALL OFF! Some things are import, such as touch pad software for laptops.
Another usefull tool is FSAutoStart (Google it) which has been updated and I forget the new name of it. With this program you can set it up so it shuts down a ton of garbage running and then launches AcesHigh. When you exit AH it then restarts everything it has shut down. (it can also defrag Ram IIRC) It was designed for Flight Sims.
And of course download 3-4 diff. anit-spyware/malware programs and run all of them. Most are only good for finding @25% of the garbage out there, so it's best to find 3-4 that all excell in their own niche and cover y'er bases. (one anti-spyware/malware program just won' cut it)
You do all this and you will not only be amazed at how much better you computer is running, but that nasty sawtooth will be gone.