Old card, high CPU load

Has it always had this problem or did it just develop?

If you just noticed it, how recently?

How long have you had the machine? How long has it been since a reformat?

Keep in mind that the Vanta is integrated and doesn't have its own physical processor, so it will be stealing CPU cycles instead. If you have an old PCI or AGP video card , slap that in and give it a shot. It might alleviate your problem.

YourMothersAnAstronaut,

I got it a year ago, and it has always done it. Did it with 98SE as well as my current W2K. Drive has been formatted a few times. The drive is free of malware, etc. The Vanta is a PCI card. There is no onboard graphics hdwr on my mobo.

As I'm writing this, Task Mgr shows the thre apps I have open, Ffox, Tbird, and K9, plus the Win background suff. All show 0% CPU. Moving my cursor over to the Ffox scroll bar brings Ffox to 22% until I stop, then back to 0. Scrolling this reply page top to bottom gives 58%, then to 0 when stopped. If I were to go offline with the browser, it would do the same. Same thing using IE.

I ran SpeedFan, which shows CPU use jump, CPU temp jump, and CPU fan speed jump at almost exactly the same time (the thermister or RTD must be part of the CPU die). Fan speed tracks temp using mobo PWM. Fan sound changes too (annoying as heck).

Try this page: Phoenix Fly.com (it's a safe page) loads my CPU at 80+% just sitting there. With HTML <marquee> support disabled on my browser, it sits at 12-16% (due to Flash).

Anyway, sorry to blabble on. Maybe it is normal, as liquidpaper007 above has experienced. If so, a new fan (mine's roadkill) will likely get rid of the noise.

Thanks