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450 Watt PSU 2.0 Ghz AMD 3200+ Gigabyte K8N Mobo 512mb Corsair RAM x2 HIS Radeon 4670 AGP XP Home SP3 Western Digital 200gb x2 Yesterday I woke up to find my computer was off, due to a power outage. CPU usage is now idling at around 30-50%. I checked the process tab in task manager to find that nothing was using my CPU, and that System Idle Process was at 99. This should mean nothing is using it, yet the high CPU usage remains. Prior to this my computer would often idle at 2-4%, only reaching about 50-60% when running Call of Duty 4, and 80% when running Starcraft 2. I noticed in both games with the graphics on low that I was getting around 30 fps, whereas I normally get around a steady 60 with medium settings. Interestingly enough, my ping to nearby servers was up 20-30 ms which has never happened before. Ping increase was also present at speedtest.net Scanned using Avira and Spybot, found nothing. Uninstalled Avira, checked with AVG, still nothing. Checked MSConfig, most of startup is always unchecked, in services there wasn't anything new. I run my OS partition very lean, so reformatting was a quick answer to try. Surprisingly it remained at a consistent medium usage despite the fresh install. I've tried googling various terms and have come across many with CPU usage problems, but my situation hasn't been answered by anything I've found. So I turn to minds more experienced than my own: Is there a program I can use to break down CPU cycles more completely? Is there a way to test if the power outage has partially damaged the CPU, without another computer to test it in? Are there other plausible explanations for this behavior I'm unaware of? Screenshots of my task manager processes and performance tab can be found here: http://img413.imageshack.us/i/wtm1.png/
http://img690.imageshack.us/i/wtm2.png/
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Hyrule18772 Posts
First, Task Manager is garbage. Get Process Explorer.
Second, close Firefox.
Third, your computer isn't good enough to get 60fps in retail.
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You're right, between 40-60 fps, lower on creep. This is a repost from a few other forums, and was trying to avoid getting too deep with them.
Downloaded Process Explorer, according to it something inside System Idle Processes called 'Interrupts' is causing it.
I'm new to Process Explorer obviously, so I'm not sure how to interpret this. Help directory in PE seems to be broken. Any ideas?
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The problem is hardware interrupts, probably caused by a bad driver for some hardware you're using.
A common cause of this problem is your wireless adapter. In fact, I had this exact issue with my laptop a few months ago. You'll know the wireless adapter is at fault if cpu usage returns to normal when you disable it. If this is the case, try updating drivers or using a different driver altogether (i went from using the microsoft wireless driver to the driver supplied by the hardware manufacturer and this solved my problem).
If the wireless adapter is not at fault, the issue lies in some other hardware. Try disabling(/unplugging) things like your mouse and keyboard and see if anything returns cpu usage to normal, then update/change drivers for that device.
If you identify the cause of the problem and are unable to solve it with different drivers, you may have to buy a replacement. Before you do, though, try googling for a solution specific to the hardware causing the problem.
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I problem i found was my audio.. if your using realtec audio drivers, check for a process called audiodg, that can spazz out causing all manner of slowdown and cpu spikes. You just need to re-install drivers or disable effects on audio for that to fix. Problem plagued me for months until google finally turned up useful results.
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I discovered my problem after a TON of research. Process Explorer was the first step, I discovered that a System Idle Process called 'Interrupt' was causing it. Apparently this tells the CPU to pay attention to a piece of hardware, and by virtue of that, it's driver. Turns out it was an HD audio problem.
For someone that has the same problem and stumbles upon this in the future, use a program called RATT to see what is requesting so much CPU usage. This is evident in the IRS column of the log it generates after it's tracking process. Higher numbers mean higher CPU usage, and anything requesting a vastly larger amount of CPU time than other processes is likely the culprit. Disable them in Device Manager. If this doesn't work your hardware is faulty.
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