CPU Never Runs at 100%

K

kno

New Member
Gday,

I have a new PC at work with CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66 GHz 64bit with 4GB of RAM.

When I run models which heavily load the computer, the CPU Usage never goes over 25% in task manager and the RAM still has 3 GB available, yet the model still takes a few minutes to run.

Is this due to hyperthreading? is this really a true indication of the CPU speed? Any way to make it crank at 100%? (im pretty sure the old AMD CPU would crank at 100%),

cheers,
Kane
 
The Core 2 Quad doesn't have hyper-threading, that's an i-series thing. CPU usage almost never goes near 100% unless the CPU is under a lot of stress from multiple applications... I doubt the problem with things taking so much time to run isn't from your CPU... that's why the usage isn't going near 100%.
 
Modelling? As in CAD?

That can only use one core as all the calcs have to be done one after another (so they can not be split over multiple cores), so the 25% is one core working at 100%.

Doug.
 
dug987654 said:
Modelling? As in CAD?

That can only use one core as all the calcs have to be done one after another (so they can not be split over multiple cores), so the 25% is one core working at 100%.

Doug.
Click to expand...

Nope not at all. Using the rendering button on AutoCAD, it freezes my computer for awhile (all 4 cores at 100%) for the calculations, then the video card kicks in and does the rest of the job and my comp unfreezes.

Mind you... this is on an i7 920.
 
kno said:
Gday,

I have a new PC at work with CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66 GHz 64bit with 4GB of RAM.

When I run models which heavily load the computer, the CPU Usage never goes over 25% in task manager and the RAM still has 3 GB available, yet the model still takes a few minutes to run.

Is this due to hyperthreading? is this really a true indication of the CPU speed? Any way to make it crank at 100%? (im pretty sure the old AMD CPU would crank at 100%),

cheers,
Kane
Click to expand...

Intel_man said:
Nope not at all. Using the rendering button on AutoCAD, it freezes my computer for awhile (all 4 cores at 100%) for the calculations, then the video card kicks in and does the rest of the job and my comp unfreezes.

Mind you... this is on an i7 920.
Click to expand...

Do you know that it is CAD he is using for the modelling? It certainly sounds like the application being run is single threaded. In which case Doug is correct, the usage will never go to 100% because only 1 core is being used in full.
 
thanks guys, the application is a water quality modelling program, it shows as using all cores but only at 25% each, I am guessing this is due to bad programming? The reason i want it to go at 100% is because it takes a fair while to run, despite their being plenty of processing capacity left....
 
Programs will only be as fast as they are coded. It's probably not coded to take advantage of all the CPU power you have. When I rendered cad models my CPU usage never actually peaked out either.
 
The application is probably single threaded. Can't do much about that. It splits the work between all 4 cores so the CPU isn't working as hard. But if you only had a single core processor, it would be pegged at 100%. If you had a dual core, it would be running at 50%.
 
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