only 50% CPU usage for some processes

  • Thread starter Thread starter joes
  • Start date Start date
J

joes

Hello there

I have a strange performance behaviour on my Windows XP System.
Pentium 4 CPU 3GHz, 1GB RAM (DDR 400MHz) and 800MHz Frontside Bus.

Some processes which are normally using 100% CPU usage on other
machines, just are using consistently 50% of the CPU on my machine. I
don't think that it is a failure of the Taskmanager display, because I
can normally continue to work with the computer as for instance the
processes would have a lower priority as the others. But they don't
have. One of the applications is for instance the Java Interpreter
(java.exe or javaw.exe).

Could anybody out there explain me this strange behaviour and is there
a limitaton in XP that some processes could not become 100% CPU
performance ?

Next question is why I do see in the Taskmanager two CPU's although I
have only one installed ?

thank you for any helpful suggestions and comments
regards
Mark
 
Sounds like you have no problem. You have an Intel p4 processor with Hyper-Threading Technology requires a computer system with an Intel® Pentium® 4 processor supporting HT Technology and a Hyper-Threading Technology enabled chipset, BIOS and operating system. Performance will vary depending on the specific hardware and software you use. See http://www.intel.com/info/hyperthreading/ for more information including details on which processors support HT Technology.
Review above info for better understanding

The best to you Joes...
 
Hi there,

You're seeing two CPU meters under the task manager
because WinXP "sees" your Hyper-Threading processor as
two separate processors (that's the whole idea behind the
system).

As for only being able to use 50% of the CPU, it may be
for the same reason. Think of your CPU as being split in
half, and each half can work on its own just as well as a
whole processor. Some processes are only able to finish
one calculation at a time.

Say you've written a program that loops through an index
from 1 to 1000. It then does a lot of calculations on
that index a lot of times (just to use up time). The
computer isn't able to take advantage of the hyper-
threading capabilities because the program must wait for
the index to finish before it can move on. If there were
two things to do at once, then you might see a total of
50% usage.

Just to be sure, in task manager, do you see both bars
moving up and down while the CPU is at 50%? Then you are
using the Hyper-Threading capabilities. If one of the
bars is maxed out and the other is empty, then you've got
a situation like I described above.

Hope this helps,

Nick

-----Original Message-----
Sounds like you have no problem. You have an Intel p4
Click to expand...
processor with Hyper-Threading Technology requires a
computer system with an Intel® Pentium® 4 processor
supporting HT Technology and a Hyper-Threading Technology
enabled chipset, BIOS and operating system. Performance
will vary depending on the specific hardware and software
you use. See http://www.intel.com/info/hyperthreading/
for more information including details on which
processors support HT Technology.
 
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