High CPU usage

[PhilF]

Originally Posted by mrk74

My understanding of the technical side of computers is quite limited. My understanding is/was 100% was "maxed out" and you wouldn't/couldn't use it for too much else if it was already at 100%.

Prime95 runs at the lowest possible priority. That means that any other software gets to use the CPU as much as it wants, with Prime95 yielding the CPU to any other process or task.

But that means that when it isn't doing anything else, the CPU does indeed give Prime95 100% of it's time. So seeing 100% is a good thing if you want Prime95 to do the most work. However, as has already been mentioned, if heat or power consumption are concerns, that is when you might need to throttle Prime95 back in order to meet your needs.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by PhilF

Prime95 runs at the lowest possible priority. That means that any other software gets to use the CPU as much as it wants**, with Prime95 yielding the CPU to any other process or task.

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** if it doesn't have itself the lowest priority too, in which case it will share the ticks with P95. Known cases are some plugins for Acrobat Reader (like the 3D plugin, etc) and a couple of other programs that install themselves with lowest priority too, and some were already discussed on the forum. They become extremely unresponsive when P95 runs, due to this fact. If that is your case, you can modify the priority of those programs from task manager, or use less workers, or use "pause while running" features of P95, whichever works better for you.