one core using higher CPU than others. idle process at 99%

[boofie]

Hello
would like to know if anyone can shed some light on why one of my CPU cores is always running at higher CPU usage than the others.
see screen shots below. should be obvious what I am referring to. even though I have minimized allot of the items running and the task manager shows 99% idle processes

windows 7 64 bit
intel i7 920 2.67GHz running at 3.01 GHz

In short. 99% idle system process for CPU
one core of CPU always running at higher usage than all other CPUs.
In advance thank you for the feedback
JB

2 by JB-JPN, on Flickr

1 by JB-JPN, on Flickr

3 by JB-JPN, on Flickr

4 by JB-JPN, on Flickr

5 by JB-JPN, on Flickr

6 by JB-JPN, on Flickr

 

[AquinoX]

The "Idle System Process" shows how much your CPU is idle.
It doesnt use your computer's CPU speed.

Try running a game and check it again, which is bigger?

 

[boofie]

yes thank you that is also my understanding of what the system idle process reflects.
Maybe I should have just restricted the question to
why is one CPU showing so much higher usage than all the other cores?

when running a song with about 40 plug ins and 10 VSTis the CPU usage for each core seems to go up proportionately

8 by JB-JPN, on Flickr

 

[gamerk316]

That's normal; programs prefer to keep all their work on one core, due to HW concerns (EG: Keeping data in the same CPU cache, rather then duplicating it for each core). And one core will typically do more work then others since applications tend to do most of their work in a single thread. That's why single core performance matters so much.