What would you do about this lag?

[kaluppo]

I have been living with lag for what seems to be forever. My PC has dual 3.6 Ghz processors, 4 gb memory and was purchased 2 years ago. I have cable modem through direct TV which is to say AT&T. I really don't think it's the PC or internet provider.

Here is the deal. 99% of the time I find that I am running slower then I should. Other players always outrun me. I zone quick enough and nothing seems out of whack except for my run speed. For example I will have SOW on and I still cannot outrun a orc warrior from orc highway in oasis. If I have to zone an add then I get hit the whole way to the zoneline so I have died many times when I shouldn't have.

1% of the time the lag isn't there. I can not explain why but all of a sudden I notice my melee rate and the mobs melee rate speed up (like we both got a haste but we didn't). When that happens I notice I run full speed and can outrun most mobs as I should with SOW on. But within 15 minutes everything slows down again.

So I am torn between two possible fixes. One is I am considering buying a good graphics card instead of using the graphics port built into my PC. Maybe my lag is graphics related. Second is I am considering just buying another PC altogether because I think it's possible malware could be causing this. When I downloaded P99 originally I used all the free software out there which opened me up to pop-up heaven and malware/spyware. I now own the titanium CD's so if I got a new PC I would NOT have to download all that crap like I did two years ago.

So which do you think is most likely gonna fix it?