Idle cpu usage

[MrChipMuthabored]

What should your CPU usage be when its idle? Around maybe, 0-10%, right? Well mine spikes up to 50% when idle. What the heck is going on? I've got nothing running (explorer and systray only), so why would the cpu be working so hard? The cpu used to hit 100% at times and give me an hourglass, but every since I defragged, it went down, but still, 50% cpu usage at idle is pretty weird.

 

[Balt]

I think that's probably caused by your computer swapping data around on your hard drive. By defragging you likely decreased the amount it needs to move around.

How much RAM do you have?

 

[MrChipMuthabored]

I've got 256MB ram (check my rig below). That should be more than enough.

 

[OneZeroOneZeroOne]

Are you running SETI or Napster?

 

[BadThad]

What OS are you using?

 

[MrChipMuthabored]

I made sure all I have running in WIN98 is Explorer and Systray when monitoring the kernel.

Check out my system below. I've got all rig info there.

 

[TonyT]

Have you tried monitoring your CPU usage right after a clean boot?

 

[airfoil]

I'd like the answer to this question too. In fact, I was gonna post it myself...goes to prove why AT is the best

 

[Shack70]

Try re-sizing your swap file to 640 meg(256x2.5) min and max. This will stop Windows from resizing the swap file all the time. See if this does the trick...

 

[tweakr]

Spiking CPU usage while idle can be down to a less-than-perfect ACPI implementation by your motherboard manufacturer. I saw this on my old ZM6 (before it went to motherboard heaven, RIP...). You might want to try updating the bios, or disabling ACPI in the bios (although this will cause Win98 to have a cardiac arrest on startup, as it has to redetect all your devices).

cheers
tweakr

 

[MrChipMuthabored]

I changed my virtual memory settings so total memory is 512 (physical + virtual memory) by setting the min and max to 256MB. Also, I went into my system.ini file and added the line "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" so the system should use only virtual RAM when its out of physical RAM.

Well, after all of that, the CPU is still accessing something for no reason.

Anybody else? I mean, check your box. This same thing might be happening to you right under nose, stealing precious clock cycles, robbing you of your expensive machine's performance.

 

[tweakr]

Did you check whether you have ACPI enabled? Two of my systems have ACPI, one does not, and the two ACPI-enabled systems have cpu usage spikes while "idle", exactly the same as yours does. The one that does not (a K6-2 system) idles from 5-10% usage with its' winmodem active, and nothing with it inactive.

However, I have noticed no difference in performance with ACPI enabled or not, Sandra still gives me the same results (+/- 5% as usual), as does 3dmark. UT and QuakeIII are the same, no difference in speed.

I've also noticed a strange thing, which is that when ACPI is disabled, my hardware monitor reports CPU temps that are consistant with the BIOS ones, whereas when ACPI is enabled, the cpu temp is upto 10c less than my case temp. Strange, and I have no idea why ACPI effects the hardware monitoring in this way.

cheers
tweakr

 

[MrChipMuthabored]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm probably not going to do anything with my ACPI. I think it might be my board. I have a warranty on it, and I might just bring it back and get a A7V installed.

I'll check one more thing though...since I have 2 hard drives, maybe I'll have to disable the automatic swap file settings for it as well.

 

[tweakr]

Well, why not just set the spindown on your hard drives to 3 minutes, that way the system CANNOT be accessing the drives while you are running the system monitor. You will see that it has nothing to do with the drives, or the amount of memory.

If you're not willing to try what I suggest, then I won't post anymore to this thread.

tweakr

 

[loosbrew]

tweakr
acpi enables the halt commands that cpus use to idle down and keep it cool, similar to what cpuidle does. when acpi is disabled your cpu temps usually jump 10 or degrees. it did for me anyway. when i reenabled acpi my cpu temps went down back to normal.

loosbrew