I am a Newb to this hobby and this forum so please bare with me if you are shaking your head when reading this. I couldn't get rid of those spikes when I ran the driver test in Vista even after a clean install. I don't know how or why I tried this next step but it worked and solved my problem. All I did was switch my power option (control panel--> Power Options) from High Performance to balanced. That was all. I've included the pictures of both tests for reference.