EQ Sluggish at times

[jpetrick]

Today I've been having this randomly occurring problem where my game will slow down for brief moments. This phenominon was not happening yesterday. The experience is similar to being in quicksand, the animations are slow, monsters animations are slow and the game feels sluggish. The event lasts anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. This is not game lag though, my chat still runs at the same clip. I ping 100 constant while this is happening as well. It is incredibly annoying and I just want it to stop. I'm assuming it must be something with my settings but I can't for the life of me.
Any help at all on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: So i've looked into it further, i've seen some threads stating this is an issue with dual core processors. I'm messing around with all my internal settings to get this sorted out. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. Just going by trial and error at the moment.