I have this strange recurring bug where I'll play Nexuiz for about 10 min. and it will suddenly, in the middle of playing it, slow down and the sound will cut out. Not sure what is causing this as I've shut off as many background processes as I can.

Anyone have any ideas as to what may be causing this?

On some systems the screensaver kicks in. Try to disable the screensaver.

At least i had problems with gnome-screensaver. When i activated the option 'Activate screensaver when computer is idle' in the screensaver preferences it tried to start after then configured amount of time and grabbed my input focus, the game got dark and my playerd stoped dead until i repressed the keys. But as i was pressing keys the screensaver deactivated itself right again so i never SAW it.
From what i understand is that when playing fullscreen all the input is grapped by the application so X has no idea that you are actually doing something and thus the screensaver pops up.

But somehow i can't imagine there is no way to tell X to disable the screensaver.. Anyone knows if thats possible?

Of course its something that simple!

Thanks guys, hopefully the screensaver was it, we shall see.