CPU Working Overtime

[Sarestarr77]

I have Norton SystemWorks on my PC.

I've been noticing recently that everytime I get online, the CPU usage will shoot up to 100%, and the same goes for a graphics program (Final Fantasy 8).

I recently reinstalled my graphics drivers, and I downloaded a program called PCI List from tweakfiles.com. In the program, it says only my 1x transfer is enabled. I'm wondering if that's the problem? My AGP slot supports 4x, as well as my graphics card.

Which brings me to my next issue..I do not have an AGP bus setting in my BIOS, or any option to lower the bus settings. I'm wondering where they are available at?

 

[teknoguy]

what are your computer specs? what kind of video card is it? maybe it has jumper settings on the card. Maybe upgrade your bios.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Maybe you're low on RAM - you don't say how much you have.

Internet Explorer is a terrible resource hog - which might account for your on-line CPU usage. Graphics programs generally are also CPU intensive - so no real surprises.

What other stuff do you have running in the background that you could live without?

Norton's products, while generally excellent, tend also to consume large amounts of resource. Compare the difference with and without SystemWorks running.

Hope this helps

 

[AidanEnos]

The reason you are going up to 100% utilization is you probably have full virus protection on... every page you go to has several images, text, etc. that gets written to a temporary file on your computer.

If you aren't going to questionable sites or downloading warez, etc. you can scale down your virus settings and allow more CPU cycles for games, etc.

If you have a firewall, or a cable router (not a calbe modem) you can disable norton when you play games - it'll be MUCH faster!

Better yet, just do a semi-regular backup of critical data and leave it on CD so you don't really care if y ou get crashed!

AidanEnos

 

[xscape]

If you're running an internal modem then they always seem to take up a larger chunk of processing power than an external. It's not so noticable on a fastish computer but it may make a small problem worse.

 

[Sarestarr77]

Alright..Didn't expect so many replies

Specs:
T-bird 850
256 MB RAM
30 GIG HDD
nVidia GeForce II (just purchased)
250 Watt Power
Motorola internal 56k
Matsonic MS8127C mobo w/Via chipsets

Really, I don't have that much running on startup.. I even took out Norton during startup. The only thing I've got going now is Rain, my Systray, and Explorer. I recently flashed my BIOS as well, so as to stop a problem that was occuring.

I also noticed that once in a while the graphics will become slightly distorted..like the x's in the upper right hand corner of a window would get fuzzy and such.. I thought maybe it was a problem with my AGP, so I disabled 4x in my BIOS. Then, I thought it might be related to the CPU usage.. Problems galore. :>

Thanks for all of your replies, everyone.