help computer running slow need assistance

hey i just built my computer not that long ago i have a amd athlon 3400+ 64 bit chip with an asus k8v motherboard runnin windows xp pro sp2 runnin their firewall with a 200 gig hard drive partioned in to 2 drives and 256 ddr memory runnin spybot search and destroy avg anti-virus zone alarm firewall and spyware blaster so it isnt virus or spyware/adware can any1 help me speed my system up thank you

MY GOD! get more ram and fast, 256mb is not enough for that system. buy another 256mb stick of the same brand if you have a dual channel ram motherboard.. If you dont have dual channel get a 512mb stick of ram. find out what frequency your ram runs at before you buy though. im guessing you are a gamer, so what video card do you have on that system?

*smiles....yep...what beings said ^^ Your RAM has to be killing you.

yea i figured it was ram yea my motherboard is dual its 333 i bought a 512 ddr400 ultra but it wasnt compatible wit my board so i gave it to my dad now i got his it sucks i got a matrox graphics millennium pci graphics card i wanna get a radeon x800 platnium but bein 15 and already buyin what i got and made me broke gotta make some more money but no i am not a gamer really just like a high end system but i wanna be able to run doom 3 i heard it takes alot for a system to run it but thanks for yalls help

i run doom3 on high settings with a radeon 9600 pro 256mb card. I have a P4 2.4ghz running at 2.61ghz, 768mbs of ram ddr266. I get FPS around 30-40 no problem i ran and beat doom3 smoothly.

that system you got up there will run doom3 great... i wouldnt buy a Radeon X800 if you are straped for cash get a 9800 pro 256mbs and save yourself some money... its not realy worth the extra 150-200bucks for the jump to X800 unless you realy got the money. When ever i go for a new vid card I always go for one model lower then what is leading in the video card business... that way you save a ton of money and then you wait until 3 new models to come out and then buy the one lower. SO for me when the next card after X800 comes out i will buy the X800 at a much lower price.

For now just get some more ram.

ok thank you alot i will go out and get me 1 yea i am going to get some more ram in a week or 2 thanks for yalls help

you should have a total of 1gig of ram to run that system totaly effective. 768mbs might cut it for a while but you should get another stick of ram after that. So You should get a 512 stick then another 512 stick later on.