CPU Load 100% when playing games

sjeng

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Basicly when playing games my CPU load is at 100%
Doesnt matter what game i play ( q3 , cs1.6 , cs:s . cod2, nfs mw, battlefield 2 , oblivion ) the CPU load is always at 100% when playing.
I think this is effecting my fps in newer games which really pisses me off.
I have a friend with basicly the same computer and he doesnt have the problem.

i cant figure out what this is! please help??

my rig :

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ venice ( 25 degrees - 30 when loading )
Asus EN7600 GT 256 MB (40 degrees - 45 when loading )
Asus a8n-SLI Premium
2x512 DDR2 400MHz
160GB Sata HDD

Thanks for reading!
 

Doughbuy

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Virus, spyware, other background processes that you probably have running, they all consumer CPU cycles. How much load is on your cpu when your out of the game? Do you have Firewall/Anti-Virus running? How many processes are running?

Can't just really compare specs, unless the two machines are mirror images of each other.
 

sjeng

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Virus, spyware, other background processes that you probably have running, they all consumer CPU cycles. How much load is on your cpu when your out of the game? Do you have Firewall/Anti-Virus running? How many processes are running?

Can't just really compare specs, unless the two machines are mirror images of each other.

these processer are running , iam pretty sure i dont have spyware and for antivirus i use nod32

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2830/hereoj1.jpg
 

Doughbuy

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Hmmmm... you don't have a lot of background processes going on, much less than mine at least... seems pretty nominal there...

Now I'm stumped, not sure why your CPU will be running at 100%, when you alt-tab it consumes quite a bit of your CPU, but it'll settle back down in a couple of seconds, so I'm not sure if your seeing 100% load because of all the work the cpu needs to do when you alt-tab out of a game or if it's always like that...

Anyone else have a suggestion?
 

sjeng

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What is "Niet-actieve syste..."?
Why is it only 28k?
And why is it using 99% of your processor?

it means something like "none active systems"
and why its taking 99% i dont know :x
 
I think it is system idle process, or 'not active system' seems like half a translation.

To the OP:
With the amount of RAM that you have you could be swap file thrashing which would consume some CPU cycles.
 
One thing that helps me out in games is that I disable all virtual memory (aka pagefile). This dramatically affected performance. I can even ALT-Tab in and out of CounterStrike: Source or Half-Life 2 with no issues and it only takes the time for the resolution to adjust.

HOWEVER, you may not want to do that with only 1 gig of RAM. It might be worth a try. I have two gigs, so my situation is different.
 

SuperFly03

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Well I am used to my A64 hitting a 100% during gaming, especially playing a mmorpg. Iam not sure what is causing you problems, but looking at your screenshot it may just be that the games just eat up your cpu's clock cycles. As for a actual problems,I don't see any.
 

GavinLeigh

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Doesn't 100% CPU usage sound about right while playing an intense game. I mean firstly there's the game and then you add in a few background processes (especially real time virus scanning) and perhaps even a little system caching to hard drive. I mean this isn't a high end dual core rig.... it's easy to get to 100%.

Yep I think you could easily expect to see that kind of utilization, which means it's probably time to upgrade :roll:
 

sjeng

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Doesn't 100% CPU usage sound about right while playing an intense game. I mean firstly there's the game and then you add in a few background processes (especially real time virus scanning) and perhaps even a little system caching to hard drive. I mean this isn't a high end dual core rig.... it's easy to get to 100%.

Yep I think you could easily expect to see that kind of utilization, which means it's probably time to upgrade :roll:

i have it in counter-strike 1.6 aswell, which is a game that excist for about 7 years now.
 

sjeng

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One thing that helps me out in games is that I disable all virtual memory (aka pagefile). This dramatically affected performance. I can even ALT-Tab in and out of CounterStrike: Source or Half-Life 2 with no issues and it only takes the time for the resolution to adjust.

HOWEVER, you may not want to do that with only 1 gig of RAM. It might be worth a try. I have two gigs, so my situation is different.

how would i disable this?
 

GavinLeigh

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What kind of resolution do you game at ? My wife games on a 20" LCD and the CPU is always maxed out. I use a 19" and my frame rate and cpu utilization are a lot better. If you are gaming at 1600x1200 that would be hard on that processor.

You might also want to try disabling some of the taskbar items too. You can check in the task manager to see if you are using more than your 1Gb of memory. And if there are utilities running you could try and reduce those to the bare minimum.
 

Doughbuy

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I doubt he's using more than 1 gig, his task manager seems fairly lean, however, disabling paging file might cause a problem. I wouldn't recommend doing that because you only have 1 gig... which would be enough for most things, but 2 gig's is fast becoming the standard...

What kind of framerates are you getting, are you sure your being limited in anyway? If your getting 60+ FPS, then no need to worry about your CPU anyways...
 

bluntside

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I wanna say its incorporated with the ram and the GFX card u have, and it also depends on what rezolutions you have it set to, and If you max out all the settings too. Check your bios if its set to Cool'n'Quiet mode, that usually can stir up problems with your rig. :wink:
 

sjeng

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i get drops in source down too 20-30...
and cpu is 100% with any resolution
dont notice fps boost now that i disable virtual memory
and whats incorporated blunt?
 

lurk3r

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This graph shows your problem, you are more than maxing out your system ram. The virtual drive is set probably by windows to 1.5 G. You should see a huge improvement by going to 2G of system ram. With only 1G ram I would not recommend disabling the swap file, it will just crash you system.
 

sailer

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i get drops in source down too 20-30...
and cpu is 100% with any resolution
dont notice fps boost now that i disable virtual memory
and whats incorporated blunt?
\

Since you only have 1 gig of memory, I wouldn't disable the virtual memory. You should go up to 2 gig of memory, preferably using two 1 gig sticks, but using 2 gig will help speed up the computer since it isn't using swap files so much.

As Bluntside said, disable Cool'n'Quiet if you're using it. That has caused problems for many people, myself included. Also, when playing games, you might use the Task Manager to end processes that take lots of memory, for instance, steam, firefox, and anything else that isn't necessary. At the same time, intense games do use the cpu to the max, so I'm not so sure that's a problem per se'.

The next thing I can suggest would be to buy a better cpu. The 3500+ is a little overworked on many modern games. Something in the X2 class would be better, starting with a X2 3800+ or X2 4200+. One of those processors would help balance the load.

Just some ideas.
 

sjeng

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i get drops in source down too 20-30...
and cpu is 100% with any resolution
dont notice fps boost now that i disable virtual memory
and whats incorporated blunt?
\

Since you only have 1 gig of memory, I wouldn't disable the virtual memory. You should go up to 2 gig of memory, preferably using two 1 gig sticks, but using 2 gig will help speed up the computer since it isn't using swap files so much.

As Bluntside said, disable Cool'n'Quiet if you're using it. That has caused problems for many people, myself included. Also, when playing games, you might use the Task Manager to end processes that take lots of memory, for instance, steam, firefox, and anything else that isn't necessary. At the same time, intense games do use the cpu to the max, so I'm not so sure that's a problem per se'.

The next thing I can suggest would be to buy a better cpu. The 3500+ is a little overworked on many modern games. Something in the X2 class would be better, starting with a X2 3800+ or X2 4200+. One of those processors would help balance the load.

Just some ideas.

iam not going to buy a dual core, and i could prolly overclock my 3500 to atleast 2.4 ghz if that makes any difference=/
anyway i disabled virtual cant be arsed to restart again, just looking if its gonna crash now.. i dont think 2 gig will make a big change to be honest. atleast not for now.
pretty fed up with this shit, as the pc is pretty new :<
 

RomeFanatic

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Doesn't 100% CPU usage sound about right while playing an intense game. I mean firstly there's the game and then you add in a few background processes (especially real time virus scanning) and perhaps even a little system caching to hard drive. I mean this isn't a high end dual core rig.... it's easy to get to 100%.

Yep I think you could easily expect to see that kind of utilization, which means it's probably time to upgrade :roll:

Whether or not you have vsynch enabled (through the game code or through your video driver) will affect your game's CPU utilization. Without vsynch, your CPU will almost certainly always be maxed at 100% if you have a single core CPU. With vsynch, if your game can run much faster than your synch rate, the game process will have some idle time whenever it is waiting for the screen to refresh.
 

sjeng

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Doesn't 100% CPU usage sound about right while playing an intense game. I mean firstly there's the game and then you add in a few background processes (especially real time virus scanning) and perhaps even a little system caching to hard drive. I mean this isn't a high end dual core rig.... it's easy to get to 100%.

Yep I think you could easily expect to see that kind of utilization, which means it's probably time to upgrade :roll:

Whether or not you have vsynch enabled (through the game code or through your video driver) will affect your game's CPU utilization. Without vsynch, your CPU will almost certainly always be maxed at 100% if you have a single core CPU. With vsynch, if your game can run much faster than your synch rate, the game process will have some idle time whenever it is waiting for the screen to refresh.

even with vsync on its on 100% cpu load when playing source
 

snick525

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Um... the CPU is supposed to be at 100% during gaming, unless you have dual core (since most games are not multi-threaded). That is how they are designed.