this is something to do with the HT and i think programs that are multi-threaded. some programs, WMP11, FS2004, etc. use only one HT unit at 100% capacity, while the otehr one is not used, save for background tasks. on the otehr hand, some programs, like C&C3, Sims2, Oblivion, all run both HT units about 75-90% capacity for each. why is it that some programs can use both, but not all, and why doenst it max out the Usage even in Oblivion which i know is very CPU limited?

As far as some programs using only one thread while others use both threads is because some programs aren't written to use HT and only need to use one thread anyway. Other programs (primarily games) are written to take advantage of HT and let the CPU work on two threads at the same time.

As far as it not maxing out the CPU, I would imagine since there is more processing power being utilized, it is not as intense on the CPU and doesn't need to run as hard. On top of that, when you are playing a game, it will have a very high priority in the system resources and your unit will focus the available resources much more on the game when it is being played and drop all other programs that are running down the chain. Games won't let other programs use resources as much because they are so demanding. That would be my guess anyway...

thats what i was thinking. but i just figured that Oblivion which is a very demanding game on the cpu would use more of the availabel capacity

If you have an app that maxes out your resources-- you can setup a User Profile-- to reduce the rest of your systems' apps -- so you can use those extra resources for gaming --or whatever.Once setup-- you can have a Gaming profile -- and a normal one


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