CPU Usage Whack!

[davidemm]

Hey Gang,

Thank you for taking my question.

I just bought myself a new system a month ago. It has been working great thus far:

AMD Athlon64 3000+
WinXP Pro SP2
Epox 1000MHz FSB 939-pin Mobo
2 Gig Corsair ValueRam
ATI Radeon 9200

I notice that when I run a game (Total War: Rome) I some times get a lot of lag. Restarting the computer seems to fix the issue. I now see another symptom of whats going on. When I bring up task manager, and go to the "Processes" tab, I look at the list of programs running, sorted by CPU usage, and the majority of the time it reads: "System Idle Process: 99" the other 1 or 2 percent are for the task manager. HOWEVER, when I look at the bottom, sumarizing, part it reads anywhere from 30 to 50% !!!

What is going on?
Why doesn't the list and the summarizing match?
Obviously this might be why I'm getting lag.

David

 

[Apokalipse]

check what other programs are taking up your CPU time when it goes down to 50%. if it's the game that does, that should be normal.
also, your video card is not extemely high-end. the 9200 would struggle in a lot of games.
if you have the money, maybe you can consider geting a new video card. something like an Nvidia 6600 GT will give you a really big advantage over the 9200 without costing all that much. newegg and monarchcomputers have them for cheap

 

[davidemm]

Hey,

Thank you for the try. I thought I may have poorly written that. I just ment to say that I first noticed the issue while playing the game. It wasn't until later that I saw the task manager and saw a real issue.

When my system is idle, doing nothing other than task manager, I'm getting CPU usage of 30-50%. And as I mentioned, it is odd because the list of programs shows that I'm only using 1-2% for task manager, and every other CPU cycle is idle. HOWEVER, at the footer of that same page, it says I'm using 30-50%. So the footer and the list do not match. I believe the footer is correct because my computer doesn't run smooth when this "issue" is occurring.

David

 

[Apokalipse]

click on "show processes from all users" and also go to options, and make sure "show 16 bit tasks" is checked

 

[davidemm]

And I'm working on getting a 256-bit ATI Radeon 9800. Just waiting to find it at the right price. I bought the computer almost two months ago on credit, assuming I was going to work for it. However, my appendix didn't want to cooperate and I missed a lot of work so now I'm strapped for cash. I'm working on it though

I know that 9200 plays that game fine (from my old machine) and since I don't play anything else, I'm not in a huge rush to get it. I can wait for the price to come down.

David

 

[davidemm]

apokalipse, thanks so much for the help!

I do think that might be one issue behind this because I noticed that when this was happening, I had something running that didn't look familiar. It wasn't eating clock-cycles though. It was called " wowexec.exe" It was odd because it had the space (" ")before the name and I had never seen it before. Also, it did not state in the list how much RAM it was using (and now that I think about it, how much CPU it was using!!!) I googled it and came up with it having to do with 16-bit apps, but that it wasn't harmfull.

What could this mean?
(I'm waiting for this issue to occur again)

David

 

[Apokalipse]

wowexec.exe is the program used to run 16-bit apps. 99% of programs are 32-bit, and now they are starting to make 64-bit programs.
unless you need to run any 16-apps (which you probabbly don't), it is safe to close it.

 

[davidemm]

I did close it when I saw it open. When I rebooted my machine I noticed that it was not reloaded.

Could it have something to do with my cpu chew?

David

 

[Flanker]

Well, when this happened to me on my old PC, it was because I had gotten something from somewhere that started a crapload of random programs on my PC that were designed to occupy all the memory on the system. I had a helluva time deleting them, and I hope I never get that again since now I have 1GB memory and it'd take me an hour to clear it all.

Anywayz, to see if this is the case for you, go to task manager and "Performance." Then see how much of your free memory you have left.

This probably won't be the problem, but its worth a shot. Otherwise, with 2 gigs of RAM, I don't see how you're lagging in ROME: Total war.

 

[Apokalipse]

when it was open, yes.
I'd say your motherboard CD's driver installer was a 16-bit app