CPU spike problem?

Rolldawg · Nov 13, 2009

High guys, i seem to be having this problem for quite a while now. My laptop's cpu usage spike up to atleast 50% whenever i played older games. older being farm frenzy 1 (the first edition lol), paintball, dota, and counter strike. ive tried doing anything i know and fixes found from the internet, this includes decreasing graphics settings, audio capability? (not sure), resolution, run the game on compatibility mode and have made the computer run on high performance instead of quality. I desperately need your help guys, im in a pinch. Hopefully my system specs will be posted below?

oo yeah, i also know that my laptop isnt built for gaming but with those games im trying to play, i should get decent FPSs as well as lower cpu usage right?

and also, i still have a lot of space in my hard drive. thats all.

PS
im new to this forum. :D =]

***edited***
my system specs didnt show up, so anywayz, here it is.

Acer Aspire 5720Z
Vista Home Premium 32 bit
Intel Pentium Dual Core @ 1.73 GHZ, 533 MHZ FSB, 1MB l2 Cache
Intel GMA X3100
Mobile Intel R 965 Express Chipset Family
2GB DDR2 Ram
160GB Hard Drive

Rolldawg · Nov 13, 2009

a free bump. i really want to get this sorted.

lil domii · Nov 19, 2009

i'm not sure...
are you saying the cpu performance goes up and the fps goes down?

whs · Nov 19, 2009

A slow CPU and dismal on-board graphics - I don`t think you should expect much with this rig. You should also understand that your graphics "steals" up to 384 MB of your only 2GB of RAM.

d3aths3rver · Nov 19, 2009

if your CPU spikes it means that your CPU is doing the work. Because you have integrated graphics, instead of a GPU (with an inbuilt graphics card) doing most of the rendering of graphics, you CPU is doing the rendering. Your PC shouldnt have too much of a problem. that is the same specs of my girlfriend's laptop and she playss CS, Dota and other games fine. I think what you need to do is close any background processes that are running when you play your games and you should see an increase in performance while within your game.
Remember gaming is one of the most taxing things for a computer that the general consumer does, so expect some lacklustre performance on a pc like that - try upgrading your DRAM, it should help boost your performance by 20%

JimJoe · Nov 19, 2009

Yeah, game playing does indeed push the limits on your computer.

That was one way we tested the computers at university. The Dean got upset, until we pointed out it was one way to see what the hardware could handle. We just made sure as to not have games on every machine... and to not leave the games on there once we placed it in what ever building it needed to go to.

Rolldawg · Nov 20, 2009

lil domii said:
i'm not sure...
are you saying the cpu performance goes up and the fps goes down?

yep. my computer should be able to play those games smoothly.

stoneys-nutz · Nov 20, 2009

Hello Rolldawg,
What games are you trying to play ?.

lil domii · Nov 20, 2009

stoneys-nutz said:
Hello Rolldawg,
What games are you trying to play ?.

Rolldawg said:
High guys, i seem to be having this problem for quite a while now. My laptop's cpu usage spike up to atleast 50% whenever i played older games. older being farm frenzy 1 (the first edition lol), paintball, dota, and counter strike. ive tried doing anything i know and fixes found from the internet, this includes decreasing graphics settings, audio capability? (not sure), resolution, run the game on compatibility mode and have made the computer run on high performance instead of quality. I desperately need your help guys, im in a pinch. Hopefully my system specs will be posted below?

oo yeah, i also know that my laptop isnt built for gaming but with those games im trying to play, i should get decent FPSs as well as lower cpu usage right? and also, i still have a lot of space in my hard drive. thats all.

PS
im new to this forum. :D =]

***edited***
my system specs didnt show up, so anywayz, here it is.

Acer Aspire 5720Z
Vista Home Premium 32 bit
Intel Pentium Dual Core @ 1.73 GHZ, 533 MHZ FSB, 1MB l2 Cache
Intel GMA X3100
Mobile Intel R 965 Express Chipset Family
2GB DDR2 Ram
160GB Hard Drive

there you go

Rolldawg · Nov 20, 2009

lil domii said:
stoneys-nutz said:

Hello Rolldawg,
What games are you trying to play ?.

Click to expand...

Rolldawg said:

High guys, i seem to be having this problem for quite a while now. My laptop's cpu usage spike up to atleast 50% whenever i played older games. older being farm frenzy 1 (the first edition lol), paintball, dota, and counter strike. ive tried doing anything i know and fixes found from the internet, this includes decreasing graphics settings, audio capability? (not sure), resolution, run the game on compatibility mode and have made the computer run on high performance instead of quality. I desperately need your help guys, im in a pinch. Hopefully my system specs will be posted below?

oo yeah, i also know that my laptop isnt built for gaming but with those games im trying to play, i should get decent FPSs as well as lower cpu usage right? and also, i still have a lot of space in my hard drive. thats all.

PS
im new to this forum. :D =]

***edited***
my system specs didnt show up, so anywayz, here it is.

Acer Aspire 5720Z
Vista Home Premium 32 bit
Intel Pentium Dual Core @ 1.73 GHZ, 533 MHZ FSB, 1MB l2 Cache
Intel GMA X3100
Mobile Intel R 965 Express Chipset Family
2GB DDR2 Ram
160GB Hard Drive

Click to expand...

there you go

In addition, Warrior kings battle, sims, chaos legion, caesar and sims. lol. =]
theyre old games but i love them.

d3aths3rver · Nov 20, 2009

the old games arent a problem with your system. When your CPU spikes it shows that it is working harder than it normally would for e.g word processing. 3D gaming especially taxes your system, so you should expect a "spike" in the CPU usage when you check out the task manager.

But you CPU spike seems to indicate to me that you are running too many programs or "processes" from programs that you dont know you are running in the background.

What I recommend installing is Startup inspector. This program lets you choose which processes you want to load up at startup, this is often the reason why pc's slow down - because they have so many background processes running that it taxes your RAM and on your CPU. (if you choose to limit non-essential applications at startup you can find a performance boost in gaming) most people dont choose to open applications from the startup tray anyway so limiting some of these at startup should increase login times and increase overall system performance. This is because you are using your CPU to render graphics and use the RAM as the graphics memory - causing more strain on your CPU and taxing your RAM.

Program is here, typical things you can disable are updaters ie Mozilla; Google chrome, safari, plugins for internet browsers, apple updater (itunes), apple help and support, quicktime (because who uses that?), printer software and other non-essential services and programs that you can manually start yourself.
It is perfectly safe and can free up the extra RAM bottleneck that many accumulate with more applications.
This software is free, check it out.

Startup Inspector for Windows - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

Rolldawg · Nov 20, 2009

d3aths3rver said:
the old games arent a problem with your system. When your CPU spikes it shows that it is working harder than it normally would for e.g word processing. 3D gaming especially taxes your system, so you should expect a "spike" in the CPU usage when you check out the task manager.

But you CPU spike seems to indicate to me that you are running too many programs or "processes" from programs that you dont know you are running in the background.

What I recommend installing is Startup inspector. This program lets you choose which processes you want to load up at startup, this is often the reason why pc's slow down - because they have so many background processes running that it taxes your RAM and on your CPU. (if you choose to limit non-essential applications at startup you can find a performance boost in gaming) most people dont choose to open applications from the startup tray anyway so limiting some of these at startup should increase login times and increase overall system performance. This is because you are using your CPU to render graphics and use the RAM as the graphics memory - causing more strain on your CPU and taxing your RAM.

Program is here, typical things you can disable are updaters ie Mozilla; Google chrome, safari, plugins for internet browsers, apple updater (itunes), apple help and support, quicktime (because who uses that?), printer software and other non-essential services and programs that you can manually start yourself.
It is perfectly safe and can free up the extra RAM bottleneck that many accumulate with more applications.
This software is free, check it out.

Startup Inspector for Windows - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

Tried it and still didnt work. =/. i turned off lots of stuff. does it help if my computer shuts down after 1 hour of playing, and my laptop is unusually hot. =/

whs · Nov 20, 2009

So that sounds like you have a heat problem. Download Core Temp ( Core Temp ), minimize it to your task tray and observe the temp. If it goes above 70C, then you need a coolpad (costs about $20).

d3aths3rver · Nov 20, 2009

you also might want to clean out the cooling unit in your pc, get an air compressant (can that just squirts air) this can clean out some dust in your laptop and help it out a bit. - cost you less than $5
It would've been helpful if you told us that your computer overheated earlier

Rolldawg · Nov 21, 2009

Sorry guys, i didnt think it was relevant to my problem. but does how does my laptop's fan affect my cpu?

lil domii · Nov 21, 2009

Rolldawg said:
Sorry guys, i didnt think it was relevant to my problem. but does how does my laptop's fan affect my cpu?

it will blast cool air onto the cpu and will blow the heated air out of the back. it is a way of keeping the cpu cool

Rolldawg · Nov 21, 2009

lil domii said:
Rolldawg said:

Sorry guys, i didnt think it was relevant to my problem. but does how does my laptop's fan affect my cpu?

Click to expand...

it will blast cool air onto the cpu and will blow the heated air out of the back. it is a way of keeping the cpu cool

what i meant was how it would affect my laptops performance? whenever i turn on my laptop from a long sleep (after i sleep), playing a game directly would still give me high CPU usage even though it isnt hot yet.

lil domii · Nov 21, 2009

Rolldawg said:
lil domii said:

Rolldawg said:

Sorry guys, i didnt think it was relevant to my problem. but does how does my laptop's fan affect my cpu?

Click to expand...

it will blast cool air onto the cpu and will blow the heated air out of the back. it is a way of keeping the cpu cool

Click to expand...

what i meant was how it would affect my laptops performance? whenever i turn on my laptop from a long sleep (after i sleep), playing a game directly would still give me high CPU usage even though it isnt hot yet.

i just think that it needs to work harder as it is not one of the fastest cpu's. i have an old aspire 1260, with 40gb hdd, 192 mb of ram and a 1.66ghz cpu (amd sempron). it was constantly working hard and even just browsing around the internet it was topping 80 percent cpu usage, and the fans blowing their bearings off.
but, as the others said, it is more likely to be a heat problem, but i don't know why the cpu should be working harder when it is overheating :confused:

just my two cents, Dom.

stoneys-nutz · Nov 21, 2009

Has it always done this, or has it just started ?.

roy69 · Nov 21, 2009

In addition you can download killall by dmex. http://www.vistax64.com/software/166808-killall-nonessential-programs.html

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