Have you tried a fresh install of windows? Whenever you get around to it you might find it runs faster.
Also PHP can be real time, you just have to keep refreshing the page, an example is http://www.advancedpowers.com/me_4g/ it's a space RPG type of game, where you do play real time against live players, and if you don't refresh often you'll find yourself dead.
I have freshly installed it once (back in the days that I used IE). Its always been slow, for any computer I use, its about as slow as opening a .pdf file internally in firefox, gets really slow for about a min or two. My computers in perfect shape now, and it still lags.
PHP cannot really be real time, if it requires refreshs its not really real time, the closest you can really get to doing real time online without flash, is AJAX, which does require refreshing, but its in frames and you dont notice, the page just updates stats and characters positions and such, via dhtml and javascript, every single time new data is recieved from the frame that constantly refreshes. The main frame doesnt refresh.(By the way, if your playing against other people online, I believe the term is MMORPG [not just RPG])
MMORPG's can always seem like real time, by automaticaly refreshing it, but your not gonna find a real time php based game ever. Actually when it comes to MMORPG's computer games, some dont even do realtime, they just constantly connect for new updates, because its not necessary to keep a constant data stream, battles are turn based in most cases, so it doesnt matter, its not gonna effect you if you dont get the update immediatly, a few seconds of delay wont mean a thing.
Now when it comes to other generes of games, they need to be realtime, like a shooting game, or sports game, everything has to be updated in real - realtime, a few seconds of delay can be the diffrence of killing someone, or getting killed.
Flash is capable of realtime (or something very close), but you just have to set up a flash server, there could be other ways, but thats the only one I know of.
So if you want to create a real time game, online, you have pretty much Flash as your only option, and your most likely going to have to rent or buy a server for that.
You can have semi-real time by using PHP and AJAX, but AJAX is so complex, that you should leave it to only a programming geneous, and its so 'ify ify on browser support' its not gonna work for probably a forth of the people atleast. Plus the best your gonna make is a mmorpg that doesnt require noticable page reloads.
You can have something that can be confused as real time, but its nowhere near, by just having the page automaticaly refresh every couple of seconds, but the best game you will make with that is a turn based MMORPG.
And on a side note, if you make a computer game that runs in real time, and keeps an ongoing connection to the server, your most likely going to have to rent a couple of servers atleast, or buy them... and you will need a huge amount of transfer.