[Enablingwolf]

Monday I received a new video card that was defective. After I took it back out reinstalled the usual card, then brought it back to the previous XP Home OS image I had stored for such an eventuality. My rig seems to have lost some of its oomph. Just in the CPU/RAM components.
I am using an AIW 9200 and thought I wanted a little more oomph for the games I play, and for graphics manipulation. Linux don‘t play well with ATI just yet also. So I decided on a XFX 5900. I first tore the rig apart for servicing the inside really good. Upon installation the card I found out it was defective. So I reinstalled the AIW 9200. Then reloaded the OS image I had stored. It was imaged earlier that morning. I use my motherboard HPA for imaging. I know my OS hasn’t freaked out or other software issues (that I can determine). All the disks read as high transfers as they should. I did have a cable issue that was easy to fix with a new one.
Now my RAM and CPU are not up to snuff. I did the return to stock speeds like I should of during all this (before the imaging that morning). Until I could determine the rig was stable for ramping the clocks up again. I ran memory tests on the RAM, no errors. Checked the seatings of all components and did all I thought I should of to obtain the performance from the CPU and RAM. No dice and I am out of ideas for trouble shooting this thing.
The motherboard is a GA-VM266. Coupled with a 2400+ b. The RAM is matching speeds of Samsung and a stick of Elixir to total 512. This rig has ran fine before this fiasco and I usually run the pcpitstop test before and after upgrades. Since I don’t put stock into scores for bragging rights. I do like to mark how well parts are running in “the whole”. I was about the top 102%. Now I am few points lower, and I felt the subtle performance difference. Why I benchmarked the rig after the “feeling of something wrong“. I am not trying to get high scores but to troubleshoot the rig back to normal performance levels.
I need to re-overclock this rig, and if it has an issue I won’t.
Ant ideas of troubleshooting. I am flat out of ideas.
Thank you for your time.