How CPU Usage % Works

[Yankees1327]

Hey, I have posted on here before, and this is a similar issue. Running my Minecraft server, Minecraft itself, and ooVoo at the same time completely hogs my cpu. The strange thing is though, that when I run Minecraft with the server and ooVoo already running, in task manager under processes it shows that ooVoo's cpu usage had greatly increased, from about 5% to anywhere from 50-80%. I was not aware that Minecraft had anything to do with ooVoo. I was thinking that running Minecraft with more RAM may help take the load off the cpu, but I haven't seen any improvement with 2gb vs 1.

CPU is Intel Core i5 2400 @3.1 GHz
Have 8gb of RAM and Radeon HD 6870 2gb video card so im pretty sure those arent the problem.

EDIT: another strange thing: it happens maybe 2 every 3 days, not all the time. One day comp will run great with all of those programs, then i turn it off at night. Next time it starts up, its sluggish while running the same things that were fine the day before.

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Have you tried to update ooVoo drivers and maybe the program caches. Try clearing the cache with CCCleaner.

 

[king smp]

Possibly your antivirus is causing a high CPU usage?
maybe running scans causing high usage and that is why your problem isnt consistent?
check your AV and see when scans are scheduled to be run

 

[amuffin]

Are you trying to run minecraft and anothe program with 2gb of ram? You really need at least 8..

 

[capt_taco]

Minecraft is a CPU hog (relatively, of course) but it really should be nowhere near stressing a Sandy Bridge quad-core. Upon reading closer, it looks like you do have 8GB of RAM, which should be enough.

Another likely suspect in this case would seem to be Internet bandwidth. Sounds like you're trying to jam an awful lot through the pipeline, especially if you're doing multiple things both upstream and downstream at once. If you have other programs automatically updating themselves, or other devices using bandwidth, like a cable box downloading a schedule, that could be pushing things past the tipping point - if this happens at the same exact time of day, that could be an indicator.

Add in outside factors (like, if you share a connection with several neighbors after it leaves your house, on the ISP's end, which is a common way for them to cut corners, especially in apartments or other close-together housing), and you could be at the mercy of the ups and downs of internet usage in your neighborhood. In this case, the CPU usage would be a red herring and it would just appear to be spiking because it's temporarily churning.

 

[Yankees1327]

Delroy Monjo:
did that, did not seem to help. restarted computer, still no change

King SMP:
Norton doesnt scan anything unless computer is idle, i just checked

Amuffin:
I'm not really sure what you mean, I already have 8gb so i should be good there. And when running these programs, ram taken up maxes at about 6gb.

Capt_taco:
I dont know much about bandwidth, but I do not see it relating to CPU usage. I have Time Warner's best internet package so i am fairly certain band width is not the problem, but i could be wrong because it would explain why the issue is sporatic.

 

[capt_taco]

Bandwidth wouldn't be related to CPU usage, except in one possible case, which is that a lack of bandwidth causes a program to get "stuck" or endlessly try to repeat an operation that failed. In that case the CPU load would be an indirect symptom of a bandwidth issue. I'm not saying that's definitely the case, but one possibility to check out.

Another eyebrow-raiser on the bandwidth front is that you seem to have two programs at once that would be fairly intensive on the upstream part of bandwidth. I don't know the specifics of your package, but most connections give you far greater speed when downloading than when uploading, and what they call their "speed" is the download part. So even though you might be well within what your provider says its connection is rated at, if your upstream is too high, it could be bogging it down anyway.

Anyway, I would check what your provider says its upload speed is rated at, and then see if Minecraft server + ooVoo would come anywhere close to that. Maybe I'm on to something, maybe I'm not.

 

[king smp]

you could go with a system monitor that monitors your network bandwidth
something like Moo system monitor
http://www.moo0.com/?top=http://www.moo0.com/software/SystemMonitor/

it will let you see incoming and outgoing plus total network usage
plus cpu usage,hd usage,memory usage
try it out and watch when this problem occurs
maybe you can isolate it
you can right click on Moo and it will let you add and remove the fields you want to monitor

 

[Yankees1327]

With the moo system monitor I looked at bandwidth and cpu usage while recreating problem. The bandwidth did not even come close to hitting the max of 2mb.

However, all four of my CPU's cores instantly hit 100% when I opened Minecraft.

 

[king smp]

I am not familiar with running a Minecraft server
but servers in generally are very dependent on amount of clients they are running
maybe this is happening when you have alot of players on your server?

but I reread your post and Oovoo greatly increasing CPU usage doesnt make sense
I dont see why Oovoos CPU usage when climb so dramatically when Minecraft and Server are running
you know in Task Manager you can assign process affinities and priorities
just right click on process
maybe setting Oovoo to lower priority and a single core might help?

 

[Yankees1327]

Best answer selected by yankees1327.

 

[Yankees1327]

Changing the affinity has seemed to work. Know of a way to make it permanent? Every time I start it up I have to change the affinity again.

 

[king smp]

https://www.google.com/#q=affinity+cpu+software&hl=en&prmd=imvnsfda&ei=SS1UT9v3LqL40gHarfHzDQ&start=10&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=c046483b3e0e4ca3&biw=1536&bih=727

sorry
there is a good freeware program that I cant remember the name of
if I remember I will private message you

 

[king smp]

thank you for selecting as best answer
please dont be a stranger

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar