I'm not exactly sure what is going on here. My system is:

Phenom II x4 965 3.4GHz

AMD HD 5850

4G RAM

I started encountering some lock ups, so i reset my ram and video card. Now my performance is terrible on this computer (no lock ups yet though)

I started running the System monitor and i was using BF3 to test the performance. I noticed that my system was using almost all the capacity of the processor, but only about 30-40% of the Grahpics card. 

I also noticed there seems to be a noise similar to that of a hard drive writing going on comming from my processor or liquidcooling system while exerting itself.

My motherboard is a GA-870A-UD3 rev 2.0 with updated BIOS if that is relevent.

 Anyone have any ideas? 

The noise could be the pump on the cooler.

What are the cpu core temps when this happens.

What Powersupply do you have?

Try some other games and see if you get the same issue.

#1: Phenom II C2 955BE @ 3.6, Antec Kuhler 920, Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5, Asus 5870/V2, ASUS Xonar D2X, 4 x 1gig OCZ2N1066SR2GK @800, Antec Truepower New 750, Arc Midi, Win8pro x64 upgrade
#2: Athlon 64 X2 4200+, AGP 1950pro, Audigy 2, Asus A8V-D, 2gig ram,  Enermax 465P, Antec900. Now on Win8pro cat 10.2

I have an 800 watt power supply. The tempurates don't seem to jump sky high when i start it. Its like my computer isn't using the full extent of my graphics card for some reason. It happens with every game i try.