CPU spiking problems

[Nate8908]

My computer's been having problems while playing games; it will play fine for a while and the get laggy for a while and then fine and then laggy... on and on. This computer should not encounter any difficulty with the games I'm playing; it has a NVidia GeForce 8800 GT, 4 GB of RAM (although I am using 32-bit Vista so it's not all used), and AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ 3.01 GHz. If you watch the CPU usage while playing a game, one of the cores will be full handling the game and the other core will spike up in a regular pattern (looks almost like a heartbeat). While playing a game (it does it on all games, it's not just that one is messed up) it doesn't matter if I drop the settings really low or have them maxed out; it does the same CPU spiking either way. Also, it's not that any process in particular takes up more CPU usage; many different processes, including the game, task manager if I'm using that, etc., jump up in their CPU usage. I'd appreciate any advice.

 

[chookman]

Does it do it in windows as well?

 

[IH8U]

Could be a bad CPU, or an OC gone bad. Try everything at stock settings (power off, pull the CMOS battery, or move the jumper for 5 min), boot, see if the problem still exists. If not then OC a little at a time, as this sounds like stability problems. If it persists then it may be a bad CPU.