Running Windows 7, recently pages started taking a LONG time to load in Opera 23.0.1522.60.

I found that, while Opera was trying to load any page, my ability to ping my gateway because timeouts. For example, from a Command Prompt:

C:> ping 192.168.2.1 -t
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
...at this point, I click on an Opera bookmark to go to any website. Right away it becomes:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
...at this point, I stop Opera from trying to load the page; right away the gateway starts responding:
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

I played with several settings and found the culprit. Unchecking the "Use hardware acceleration when available (requires Opera restart)" option and restarting Opera gives me back the Opera that I know and mostly love.

I don't know why this behavior started recently, but I imagine it's from a recent update since my Internet and VPN connections are the same.