true, I guess it would... I guess I was hoping there would be more of a general reason why getting feared is taxing on the system due to software rather than hardware limitations... ie a specific video setting or maybe its just that I have way to many other things open in the back ground (vlc, mozilla, itunes, msn messenger,...)

hmmm not sure what to include in the system specs but:

Microsoft Windows XP SP2
Intel Core CPU @2.13 GHz
3.5 GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB)

hmmm... what else should I include?