Photoshop :: Slowed / Choppy In Middle Of Session

I was working on a project and all of a sudden everything with in PS got notably slow and choppy.  This first happened while using the selection tool (polygonal lasso), which was lagging behind and making late clicks.  I finished my selection and noticed the cursor in general was slow choppy still.  I saved my work, shutdown PS, then reboot my computer.  I reopen my project, the cursor lag seemed to be gone but the brush tool was not working correctly.  Instead of making smooth burst of color with one click (gradient like), it now looks like 256 4 bit (old nintendo style) bursts.  Or you could say it looks like multiple rings getting smaller and darker, like counting the rings of a tree trunk. 
 
This happens instantly after opening a file of any type and size.  I work with CMYK and 300dpi and while working on a page, this just happened out of nowhere.
 
I have an ASUS G74SX, i7 CPU, GeForce 560M w/2 gig RAM, 8 gig of SDRAM, 3 each SSD 300gigs (this is basically a 6 month old gaming laptop and has been working fine with PS until now).  I have my PS scratch disk set to my F drive for all art and there is nothing more than 2 gigs of space being used right now.  My RAM used in PS prefs was maxed at 5205k as suggested by the program.
 
PS CS6 is fully up to date as well as all drivers for my GPU and the rest of my laptop.