Is this normal?

[henmaster]

Ive noticed lately that when I load web pages my CPU load gets very high. It will usually hit about 70% for a second before it returns back to 1 or 2%. But sometimes it will hit 100% and cause mp3's to skip, which is very annoying. I get my CPU information from the windows 2000 task manager. I amm using win 2k pro with IE 5.0. I tried netscape but get similar results. Is this CPU spike normal? My specs are as follows:

Celeron 500 @ 550 (is this not enough power?)
Abit BF6
192MB SDRAM
45 GB IBM 75GXP using FAT 32
Geforce 2 MX
Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Sohoware NIC
Cable modem

What do you guys think?

 

[henmaster]

also, I just noticed that I can max out my CPU (100% load) if I scroll through a web page really fast. That cant be good...

 

[MCS]

Yes it's normal because if you think about it the CPU is processing HTML code, CGI scripts, Java etc etc. Once the page has loaded you will notice it drops back down again because it has nothing to process.

 

[Smurfwow]

cgi scripts are executed on the server ar'nt they

 

[MCS]

Yes, sorry, you know what I mean though, I was just giving some examples

 

[Neo666]

I would also say that this is normal...On my old Celeron 300a@464/103 my mp3
music also skipped when i scrolled a web page fast, though not when i loaded
a page....but I think it's quite normal for slow CPUs...

 

[julianf]

up the priority for your mp3 player... that's what makes w2k so cool, especially with a smp system... (in the task manager, processes, rightclick winamp.exe or mmplay.exe or what ever you use, set the priority to higher or whatever you feel like)

550 should be more than enough....

 

[henmaster]

I just booted back into win98 (first edition) for a second and noticed that I dont have this problem with that OS. In fact, Ive noticed that no matter how fast I scroll through a page with win98 the mp3 will not only play flawlessly but the visualization window in winamp will stay smooth with no slowdown. In win2k, when I scroll a page I can see a considerable slowdown and choppiness in the visualization window. Im going to borrow 128MB RAM from my moms computer tonight to see if that helps. Also, Im going to defrag the partition that win 2k is on (different from win98) to see if perhaps that is the problem. Win 2k is on my 45 GB IBM 75GXP drive, while win 98 is on a 6.4 GB Quantum Fireall EX drive. The only other thing I can think of is that possibly win 2000 is more cpu hungry than win98 and I need to upgrade? What do you guys think?

 

[henmaster]

Alright I think I got it. What I did was go performance options in the advanced tab of system properties and optimized for "backround programs" instead of "applications". Now it runs just as well as it did in win98, as far as I can tell so far. Upping the priority of winamp didnt help but this seemed to do the trick.