Games are laggy, looking for help.

[Daddy Ryuu]

Hey guys ok Ill cut to the chase, here my system specs;

MSI k9n6pgm2-v MoBo and AMD Athlon 64 x2 5800+ CPU 3.0Ghz
Hitachi Deskstar 160 GB HD - SATA 300
TRENDnet PCI Wireless card
4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz Ram
Nvidia GeForce XFX 9800gt Graphics card
and Thermaltake AMD socket am2 aluminum 92mm fan

Yes its a dinosaur, I know. But still ok specs I thought. Now I use the can you run it site to check my system against minimum and recommended specs. I meet minimum for Borderlands2, and can run it on even very high settings but it lags obviously. But even on the lowest settings it lags just enough to make aiming and moving accurately a real pain. When I played last I ran my system monitor in the background the capture what my system is doing while I play. Looks like the issue is my CPU which is basically maxed out the whole time. Is this just the best I can expect from my system even on lowest settings of a game I meet minimum reqs for? Also I try to play Fall out NV a game I should be able to max out and I get the same lag on that. Am I just missing something on my system?

[Miragen]

Lowest settings aren't necessarily the easiest on your system, some settings might switch the load from GPU to CPU, depends on your other settings if that's good or bad.

So you gotta tweak the settings to get the best out of it, not only the lowest.

[tweakee]

Certain gaming aspects, like anti-aliasing and the like, affect gameplay performance so I'd suggest tweaking those as well rather than just lowering the game settings. Take into account reducing the game res, framerate choppiness, etc.

Also, check if it's really graphics lag- maybe monitoring your framerate when you play or something.