periodic video lag in ffxiFollow

Ok, wierdness, I was told you folks might be able to help.

While playing FFXI on my PC (I get no such issues other than regular netlag near AH when on my ps2), either running around normally or just sitting still, no others around, rotating the camera, I get a "stutter" in the video. It looks like lag, but it's regular, every 20 seconds or so +/-3 seconds (yes, I timed it).

What I have:

Athlon 2.6
Windows XP Pro
nVidia nForce mobo
1024m pc3200 ram
ATI 9800 Radeon Pro w/128m RAM
Audigy 2NX USB surround system
450w power supply.
No temp spikes while playing (room is climate controlled, so case stays cool, have 2 different temp sensors monitoring).

I have the latest drivers for everything as of yesterday, except possibly the sound device, amd looking for possible updates now.

I have tried all video resoultions settings, and currently have it maxed out (1024 bg, 1600 res, bump mapping, smooth anim).

I have my desktop set to 1280xwhatever that is. I have tried it with the destop at the same res as the game, no dice, same effect.

I have manually set the d3d options for AA, etc, and tried forcing vertical synch.

I have reduced the sampling rate on the sound device in both the audigy control panel and the windows speaker advanced config.

I have disabled sound entirely thru the FF config.

None of the above (drivers, config changes) have helped. Every 20ish seconds I get a short stutter.

I need to go home and do the following:
-turn off vpu recover

-run perfmon while playing and see if CPU is spiking and see what is spiking it if it is happening

-disconnect audigy entirely (not really a long term option)

-update audigy drivers if new ones exist

-reinstall dx9

-triple check xp service pack installation.

The question: has anyone seen or heard of this kind of issue? if so, any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Ariones,
Asura Server

i also get this stuuers FPS drops from 30 to 15 to 3 then back up again it lasts forr about 5 seconds.. happens like every 30 minutes

my computer is defraged every week i always scan for adware i have NO programs that should not be running running.. so it must be a FFXI thing :S
doesnt happen when i play other games

Fraps doesn't take up too many resources, only like maybe 150k or so, so I don't think that is causing the stuttering. What speed is your hard drive, and how big is it? Is everything on partition? Is FFXI installed on the same partition as windows (eg, the defualt directory). It may also be you are trying to forcing vsync to work, do with the default d3d settings and see what happens. Try turning the models setting in FFXI down to see if that helps, as well the animation setting. Both of those are configured in game.