Slow FC4, perhaps swap is to blame

[John Degenstein]

Alright, to begin here are my system specs:
Athlon 64 3200+
512 MB PC2100 DDR
200 GB SATA
160 GB IDE
Nvidia GF4 4000 (128MB)

This is a problem I have been trying to fix for several months now,
and I am pretty sure it is the swap space on this computer has
something to do with it.  When I first start up the computer it is
blazing fast, and I have no problem filling 4 workspaces up with
resource intensive programs.  But as the days and weeks wear on the
computer gets progressively slower, to the point where simply
switching between workspaces with only 3 or 4 programs open becomes
incredibly slow.  The problem also seems to relate to programs that
use Java, such as azureus and qnext, it seems to me that there is some
kind of memory leak that builds up in the swap space over time.  Even
after the swap space has been filled I attempt to clear it by closing
all open programs, but this has no effect and it is beginning to drive
me crazy.

I did manage to find a command which I somehow got to work at least
several times:
swapoff -a /dev/logVol00/_something_here

This command alleviated my problems immediately, but then I started to
get errors about running out of memory from new programs I was trying
to open so I enabled swap again with the command "swapon".  Another
possible source of my problems is the fact I am running PC2100 DDR
rather than the minimum that my motherboard supposedly supports,
PC2700, because of this I had to underclock some of the components on
my mobo so that the computer would boot.

So I guess my main question is: is the swap space in Linux messed up,
or is it simply a problem from Java???

Thanks in advance,
John Degenstein