jordan Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 Is it bad if it says under windows task manager that my CPU usage is at 100% and that it never deviates from that?
insane_alien Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 depends. is your computer just idling or is it doing something processor heavy like folding@home or a game or calculating pi to the 1.9*10^7000 digits
Dak Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 yes. either your processor is wussy, you have too many programs running, or some program is eating up your CPU cycles, possably due to a glitch. I had it happen once to me once simply because I pressed print-screen... something went wrong, and my CPU usage went up to 100%, even after a reboot. eventually, i figured out what it was and deleted the pending print job, and my CPU usage went down to normal again. If you have windows xp, open the task manager and select 'show processes from all users', and then look down the 'CPU' columb to see if any of the processes are using a huge amount of CPU power. Also, if you dont know your CPU speed, go to start > run, and type in dxdiag, and a screen should pop up telling you, amongst other things, your CPU speed... anything tiny like 500MHz, and you probably wont be able to expect it to drop below 100% usage.
jordan Posted March 28, 2006 Author Posted March 28, 2006 It's operating at such a high percent because I am running one of those background computer programs (mine happens to deal with prime numbers). But is that ok? Or should it be something a bit lower, like 50-75%?
insane_alien Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 ahhh you have a distributed computing project running. that explains the excessive usage. in that case its normal. if you didn't run that the expected value would be 0%(not actually 0 but too small to show up) to 2% when idling. and 50-60% spikes when its doing a "light" task eg. browsi ng sfn.
jordan Posted March 28, 2006 Author Posted March 28, 2006 Yes, I understand that. But is it harmful to the computer to be operating at 100% all the time? I can't imagine that's good for it...
bluesmudge Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 When the processor is operating at 100% its physically (constant flipping of switches, constant clock pulsing etc etc) pretty much doing exactly the same as when its 50%, or any other % - CPU usage being 100 % just means its got alot of other stuff to do at the same time- its nothing to worry about - though i can't imagine how useful a computer which is always that busy could be !
Cap'n Refsmmat Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 It depends. If you have a decent cooling system, you should be fine. Check out the temperature of your CPU with SpeedFan and see if it's too hot. If it is, you have a problem. (Technically, your CPU is always at 100% no matter what, because the System Idle Process takes up the extra, just without something that takes much power.)
jordan Posted March 28, 2006 Author Posted March 28, 2006 Ummmm...Cap'n, what do I do at speedfan? What am I supposed to click on to see if my CPU is too hot?
bluesmudge Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 Normally the Bios will tell you the temp of your CPU, but there is no real reliable Temp measurement facility - so your best bet is to make sure it doesn't get too hot in the first place by just making sure your case is adiquetly vented - and has a reasonable heatsink and fan installed (case fan will be needed as well) My Intel P4 630 normally sits at 40 - 55 c - depending what im doing look at this PDF: http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/06/20/62086_62086.pdf might give you some ideas - Temp is key to a happy machine
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