[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

You dident hit a spot wit dozens upon dozens of ship textures loading did you? If so it should pass eventually.

also as mentioned above it sounds like some process is hogging cpu cycles try looking at what or how many processes you are running and try to thin it out a little.

Lastley its entirely possible your video card is going bye bye. Do other games and or bench marks show poor performance?

I would look here as well. For the game to just out of the blue start act like you describe I'm inclined to believe it is a hardware issue.