I recently have purchased a new PC and I am having trouble with it lagging on several games I have been playing. Such are, Grand Theft Auto 4. Star Wars Force Unleashed, and Halo 2. these are old games my computer should run circles around it. My specs are as fallow,

Dell XPS 8100
8 Gigs RAM
1T Memory
ATI HD 5700 series
2.80 GHz inte Core i7
Windows 7

Does anyone know why I have to lower the graphics when I should be able to max them out no problem? Any ideas on how to fix this problem? Thanks!

It may not be the graphics as such, you may have a bunch of processes running in the background that are using up the processor. Make sure you know everything that is loadoing up at startup and keep it to a minimum. Check the Startup group and use msconfig to sort out the rest.

Yea, there isn't much ever running. It's a brand new computer. Less then 2 months old. So I am not sure on what is going on or how to fix it

Dell adds a lot of trialware and other "helpers". I'm a Dell fan myself and the first thing I do when I get a new one (or set one up for my tech support customers) is to de-crapify it. :)

What kind of programs can you take off from them?

You can remove pretty everything in the Windows Startup folder. That doesn't uninstall anything it just stops them from running at startup. Have a look through your Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and features) for anything that you don't need.

Using msconfig is excellent as well: How to use MSCONFIG in Windows 7: NetSquirrel.com

De-crapify it. ROTFL!

I do fairly much the same thing, but never thought of it quite in those terms. :D

I didn't just invent it, there's a guy that wrote a utility: yorkspace.com Blog Archive Introducing the Dell De-Crapifier… :)