Is it bad to have CPU at 100% ?

As long as your CPU remains within a reasonable temperature, you're fine. If your CPU is at 100% usage for no apparent reason... then you've definitely got malware.

Now that I think about it... are you talking about your clock speed? Like 2.4 Ghz or something? If so, I'm guessing you're using speed step or cool n' quiet, which is a good thing. It's there to reduce power consumption as well as your clock speed when you're idle and save you money. As soon as the extra CPU power is needed, this feature is disabled and it will go back to it's full speed. If you disable this and run your CPU at it's stock frequency, that is perfectly fine. Just watch your temps if you're overclocking.

It sounds like he has a Asus mobo with their performance throttle program and what it does is lowers the CPU multiplier depending on what setting. So Power Saving will be at 6x(for a Intel C2Q/C2D for example), Reccomended will probably be at 7x and Performance will keep it at 9x.

The other way it would work is if its older than a Core 2 it would lower and raise the FSB. For instance, I used it with my P4 EE. On performance the FSB would be the full 200MHz effective 800MHz so it would run at 3.4GHz. But on power save it would lower the FSB. All in Windows too.

So in relative theory, if I am correct, its fine. It just means its running at its max speed instead of a lower speed. Wont hurt it a bit. Now if it was always 100% load and running extremely hot then that would be bad.

Don't worry about a thing. Your CPU will be fine. I run mine at 2.7GHz(300MHz above its stock 2.4GHz) about 90% of the time and nothing bad happens. It just runs uber fast.

I have a new Dell Inspiron 530S. Intel Duo Core CPU E4500@ 2.2GHz. I guess the problem is...I don't know the temp or how to check it. I tried to, but i can't find anything!!! The GPU raised my gaming graphics in Vista from 3.3-4.4

I have CPU power set on "performance" and it is at 38 degrees celcius. Good or bad?

try loading it up with orthos to see what temps you get..im sure youll be fine. by the way you won't be able to OC the cpu in that dell board, they have a locked bios. you'd need to get a new motherboard, but from the looks of it, try reading up a bit more before that. look around the forums there's a lot of helpful posts

once again, you would need a new card if you want to play modern games with that PC.

The CPU cannot be OC'd but the GPU can.

Yeah, I don't know what the performance log is unless it's some proprietary CPU monitoring software.

As for this. He means that it's running at it's max frequency (ex. 2.2Ghz), not that all of his CPU time is being used up.

His performance log, or whatever it is, must have some kind of speed step options that allow him to turn it on or off. When on "recommended", speed step is likely enabled so it lowers the multiplier for him, so he may see 1.8 Ghz or something, while performance is going to just max out the multiplier so it's always running at 2.2Ghz. Hope that clears it up.

So now i go back into performance information and tools. I can now adjust power usage. When i put it on performance my CPU is at 100% max frecuency like now. If i set it at "recommended" it says CPU is at 54% max frequency.

OK. Thanks for all the help.

The board may be locked, but so is mine. I downloaded Ntune and oc'd my Cpu easily.

I guess so. I downloaded NTune also. Everytime i move the slider and hit APPLY, it flashes and goes right back to stock settings...weird.

is it bad for your coffee maker to brew at 100% no
is bad for your toliet to flush at 100% no 100% swirls work best!

same with a cpu

its not like a car engine there is no moving parts!

is it bad for your microwave to run on high or 100% - no ---- same thing!

to anwser on the topic, i ones had a bad wireless pci card.
when i looked at my cpu usage, it was always above 50%, without any reason. so there was process with a long name and was using a lot of cpu and memory. i just had to disactivate it and the cpu probs were gone, and the pc went faster. so question, do you have a wireless card?