Games and loading levels, the Ultimate Freeze.

[usvc]

I have been having this problem for several months, and I haven't been able to solve it. It only occurs with First Person Shooters, and the game engines that this occurs in are the Quake III engine and now the new Unreal 2 engine. Whenever I load a level, the progress bar starts off normal, then slows down to a crawl, then freezes, and I have to restart the computer. A friend told me that it might be my chipset, which is known for problems. I have a Tyan Tiger 230 motherboard, with a VIA Apollo Pro133T Chipset. Has anyone else come across a problem like this? I've searched around the message boards, and couldn't come up with a related post.