Not being very computer savy, I was wondering what settings you are running with the Radeon 9700 card. Such as in the 3D mode the anti-aliasing, antisotropic filtering, texture preference, mipmap detail level, and the wait for verticle sync-true form. also the open GL, whatever that is. I'm running a 2.8Mhz. Any help would be appreciated because when it comes to this stuff, I'm kinda lost.

Run everything at max. You should have no problems. If running 1600x1200 turn off AA and save horsepower for other functions.