Thanks for your feedback Feanor. But the truth is I play BF3 with a mix of Med. High and Ultra settings at 1680x1050 dpi just fine. On the order of 70FPS average. No, it's either the lack of ram or HDD causing me the grief.
I just updated the drivers to the new betas. They seem to improve things. It doesn't happen all the time. If it did then I would blame the outdated system. But it is not. Further If I really dumb things down I get over 100FPS with this "outdated" rig.