Windows Vista High CPU usage

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[H]ard|Gawd
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I built a system using a 939 Opteron 148 (single core, 2.2 ghz) cpu and 2 gb of RAM (4 x 512mb) to give to a friend of mine so he can play TF2. First I tried Windows 7, but I kept getting a lot of lock ups and blue screens. So I decided to install Windows Vista. Vista has been more stable with this ASUS motherboard, but cpu usage is crazy. Doing nothing it will jump around and even reach 100% at times. While playing TF2 I can tell it's just not as smooth as what it should be. The video card is an x1800xt. This same system has been used to play TF2 in the past when my son had it. But it was using XP then. Is there any reason why Vista is doing this? I have Vista installed on my own PC, and I don't have this problem. Of course, my cpu is a quad core Phenom. Is the cpu usage so high because the Opteron is only single core? The Vista install was a clean install, and it is pretty bare. Only things installed are Catalyst Control Center, Steam, and Team Fortress 2.
 
CPU usage can't be compared across systems unless the hardware (more specifically, the CPU) is the same. Open the task manager and see what's eating CPU cycles. Chances are, the CPU is just slow and that's just how it'll be.
 
I put Vista on (gulp) a socket 754 Athlon and it was amazing how the CPU was all over the board and sitting at 100 from time to time while doing nothing.

Slow CPU, that is the answer... as the folks above me have noted.
 
Its not the cpu being not powerful enough. I have run vista on far less powerful systems without issues including intel atoms. Any k8 based processor should no problem running it regardless if they are 1 core. It runs fine on single core pentium 4's, single core turions (k8 based) (less than 2.0ghz). Its something else. The opteron is more than capable. Its something witha setting or bad driver or there is something running in the background. I have ran vista and windows 7 on far older hardware including pentium III's and the original athlon (the one from 99).
 
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Its not the cpu being not powerful enough. I have run vista on far less powerful systems without issues including intel atoms. Any k8 based processor should no problem running it regardless if they are 1 core. It runs fine on single core pentium 4's, single core turions (k8 based) (less than 2.0ghz). Its something else. The opteron is more than capable. Its something witha setting or bad driver or there is something running in the background. I have ran vista and windows 7 on far older hardware including pentium III's and the original athlon (the one from 99).

Why would you run that on something so crappy...
 
I did a search last week and found a lot of people having the same high cpu usage with Vista. I saw several reports of it having something to do with dwm.exe (desktop windows manager?, or something like that). When looking at it, there's different things that's going high. dwm.exe is one of them; I've seen svchost or something like that going up, and I think I saw something like TaskInstaller going high. My initial thinking was along the lines of what blackhand1001 said, that the Opteron should be up to the task of running Vista. But I don't know. I just wonder if this ASUS motherboard is not liking Vista and is causing something screwy to go on.
 
I was running vista 64 on a e6750 dual core at 3.2 ghz when it would start running at 100% when I booted up.It would run at 100% for 5 or 6 minutes. A couple of weeks later I read a thread on here about people having the same problem. It was a problem with mse.
I uninstalled mse and installed a different antivirus and that fixed my problem. You may not
be running mse but if you are you could try this.
 
cpu, turns off windows indexing and other features, sorry but that CPU is NOT powerful enough to play TF2, period.

sounds like indexing, super fetch and so on, and ya, Vista would run like crap on a single core atom, period, dont care what you say, even Windows 7 can be sluggish on early day atoms.
 
cpu, turns off windows indexing and other features, sorry but that CPU is NOT powerful enough to play TF2, period.

sounds like indexing, super fetch and so on, and ya, Vista would run like crap on a single core atom, period, dont care what you say, even Windows 7 can be sluggish on early day atoms.

I have to disagree with the cpu not being powerful enough to play TF2. We used to use this as my son's PC and teamed with the x1800xt he could play it with all settings on High. We never had a problem with this system when it was running XP.
 
^ its more than enough to run both OS's. There must be something with the motherboard or drivers. Have you tried updating the bios.
 
Instead of continually guessing what it could be, why don't you use something like Process Explorer to graph CPU usage for programs when you believe CPU usage is higher than what it should be?
 
I have to disagree with the cpu not being powerful enough to play TF2. We used to use this as my son's PC and teamed with the x1800xt he could play it with all settings on High. We never had a problem with this system when it was running XP.
Well you did say that with a clean install of Windows 7 that it was locking up and acting funny. On lower end systems, 7 is going to perform better. I'd try to get that working again. Try different drivers or make sure you're using the most updated ones.
 
cpu, turns off windows indexing and other features, sorry but that CPU is NOT powerful enough to play TF2, period.

sounds like indexing, super fetch and so on, and ya, Vista would run like crap on a single core atom, period, dont care what you say, even Windows 7 can be sluggish on early day atoms.

Wrong.
 
cpu, turns off windows indexing and other features, sorry but that CPU is NOT powerful enough to play TF2, period.

PC System Requirements
Minimum: 1.7 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX® 8.1 level Graphics Card (Requires support for SSE), Windows® 7 (32/64-bit)/Vista/XP, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection
 
min requirements, good luck playing it on that with any resolution above 1024x

the game has changed ALOT over the years with the numerous updates and additions to it.
 
My brother plays it with ATI x1600m graphics, so it's definitely possible to play with a low end system. If you don't want to disable a ton of things I would try letting it sit for an hour or two and see if they finish. When you look at the activity monitor, what is using the CPU?
 
First things first. Vista? Really?

Win 7 should have no worse issues running on that hardware than vista does. I would suggest that you may have something wrong with your hardware. Did you run a Memtest + CD and run tests 1,3,4,5,7 to verify that there is nothing wrong with the RAM or memory controller? Orthos? Intel CPU Burn, or Linpack to verify the CPU is good?

Run SMART tools to check the drive followed by a checkdisk with sector scan enabled?

Verified the power supply with a Voltmeter?

ONCE all that is done reinstall windows 7 32bit. NOT the 64 bit version.

Turn off all gadgets and especially desktop composition (Aero).

Install this driver in your windows 7 install: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Legacy/Pages/radeonaiw_vista32.aspx

Your CPU should be at idle and stay there once you have patched the system up using windows update WITH THE antivirus disabled.

Now re-enable your antivirus and try to play TF2.

You can also bring up the task manager and check to see if your 2 GB of memory is enough. It should be, but you never know.
 
Theres no need to start disabling services or disabling aero. The hardware is capable of running all of those trust me. Its something else causing the issue.
 
Theres no need to start disabling services or disabling aero. The hardware is capable of running all of those trust me. Its something else causing the issue.

Sorry I don't trust you.

The latest AMD/ATI driver for the X1800 only supports WDDM 1.0 Windows 7 requires a WDDM 1.1 driver for full desktop Aero support. Since this support is not available AMD/ATI claims no support for Windows 7 aero. It may work at some level but only via a partial implementation using WDDM 1.0. I did not believe the comment was directed at me but I said nothing about disabling services. In Vista disabling services might be an option, but in Windows 7 those same services are turned off by default and only enable when you actually require them. This is only one of many reasons I would strongly endorse using Windows 7 as your OS over choosing Vista.

I can reference all the above info directly from AMD/ATI. Please produce contradictory info if you have any available.
 
If you really want more life out of that 939 system, consider a used Dual Core Opteron 170 or 175 from ebay. I replaced an Athlon 64 4000+ with an Opteron 175 in a 939 system and it made a huge difference.
 
Sorry I don't trust you.

The latest AMD/ATI driver for the X1800 only supports WDDM 1.0 Windows 7 requires a WDDM 1.1 driver for full desktop Aero support. Since this support is not available AMD/ATI claims no support for Windows 7 aero. It may work at some level but only via a partial implementation using WDDM 1.0. I did not believe the comment was directed at me but I said nothing about disabling services. In Vista disabling services might be an option, but in Windows 7 those same services are turned off by default and only enable when you actually require them. This is only one of many reasons I would strongly endorse using Windows 7 as your OS over choosing Vista.

I can reference all the above info directly from AMD/ATI. Please produce contradictory info if you have any available.

Windows 7 does not require wddm 1.1 for full aero support. It only requires wddm 1.1 for GDI acceleration (this is not related to whether aero is enabled or not). All the effects run perfectly on wddm 1.0 and are enabled by default( i ran my main system with a 7950gt until very recently and aero was butter smooth. I've also done it on radeon x800, x1950, x300, and 1200 express all wddm 1.0 drivers. VIsta video drivers install on windows 7 without any hacking. They are the same driver module. Heck even vista can use wddm 1.1 drivers, almost any directx 10 or above card does.
Micrsoft still lists the requirements for windows 7 aero as the requirements for wddm 1.0 and not wddm 1.1 which required directx 10.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-is-the-Aero-desktop-experience
 
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Windows 7 does not require wddm 1.1 for full aero support. It only requires wddm 1.1 for GDI acceleration (this is not related to whether aero is enabled or not). All the effects run perfectly on wddm 1.0 and are enabled by default( i ran my main system with a 7950gt until very recently and aero was butter smooth. I've also done it on radeon x800, x1950, x300, and 1200 express all wddm 1.0 drivers. VIsta video drivers install on windows 7 without any hacking. They are the same driver module. Heck even vista can use wddm 1.1 drivers, almost any directx 10 or above card does.
Micrsoft still lists the requirements for windows 7 aero as the requirements for wddm 1.0 and not wddm 1.1 which required directx 10.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-is-the-Aero-desktop-experience

Lets break this down a bit.

"Windows 7 does not require wddm 1.1 for full aero support." AMD/ATI stated using the legacy drives on Windows 7 is unsupported. Terry himself stated the resources were not spent to go through the Windows 7 Certification process nor do the drivers fully support WDDM 1.1. Easiest way around that possible issue is to disable aero. Once OP has verified that Aero is not part of his issue, I would endorse the idea of then turning it on to see if it does not cause him any stability or performance related issues. (The OP's post was about stability and performance, my responses towards him have been directed to helping him achieve that goal first and foremost.)

"It only requires wddm 1.1 for GDI acceleration" There are more differences than GDI acceleration between the two versions. But let's call this a half full/ half empty type argument.

"All the effects run perfectly on wddm 1.0 and are enabled by default" Again AMD/ATI lists it as unsupported. I have seen users claim abc xyz does not work, your experience may be different. ( I'll chock this statement up as your opinion and your personal experience.)

"Vista video drivers install on windows 7 without any hacking." I never said they didn't, and I endorsed OP installing the Vista drivers on Windows 7. So here we agree.

"They are the same driver module." Similar yes, the same.....not always. But in recent times, yes they have been the same. When win7 first came out they were not the same.

"Heck even vista can use wddm 1.1 drivers, almost any directx 10 or above card does." Same response as above.


Most of these arguments are about where and how to diagnose the problem and the process used to find the issue. I am endorsing a more cautious process of elimination. blackhand1001 is suggesting that the problem is either hardware or driver related, which is strange as most of my recommendations have been to verify hardware and or use specific video driver OS combination. So although blackhand1001 evidently agrees with my concept of where the problem could be rooted (hardware or drivers), does not agree with my specific recommendations to resolve the issue. :rolleyes:
 
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