Pentium D Processor 820 2.8 GHz

[vikd]

Hi, I have a Pentium D 820 with Dual Core with 2GB Ram. 1*1GB and 2*512MB and am running WinXP Pro. I am noticing that when I burn DVD's and run other apps simultaneously it seems the CPU makes quite a bit of noise and the fan/cpu seems to be spinning quite a bit. Is there a possibility that it might burn out? I am just wondering if there is any way to tweak the settings so that the CPU is not maxed at 100%. I try to run multiple applications at one time and I though that was the benefit of the Dual Core. I am not that familiar with the CPUs. I purchased this early last year before the Core 2 release. (should have waited I guess!). From what I have read I guess that the Pentium D's do take a lot more power and hence require cooling. That could explain the noise.? Am I right?

1. Is there a way to make one process go to one cpu and the other process go to another? If so could you please let me know how to do this?

2. Any tweaks that can be done to make sure that the CPU doesn't run at 100%.

Thanks for helping.

 

[Roguestar]

Your processor will normally run at 100% for intensive applications, it does that because otherwise it'd be a waste of its power and design. There's nothing to worry about running a CPU at 100%, it's designed for that. All you need to do is make sure you've got the temperatures under control. A fan that speeds up when the CPU is under load is a good thing; it's working harder to keep the CPU as cool as it can. If you want you could replace your cooler with a quieter, more efficient one and your temperatures may come down and noise be reduced.

1: There is indeed a way to do this. Open Task Manager and if you have, for example DVDBurningsoftware.exe and OtherDemandingTask.exe running, you can right click on the processes and select "set affinity". Set the affinity of DVDBurningsoftware.exe to CPU 0 and the affinity of OtherDemandingTask.exe to CPU 1.

2: As mentioned above, it's a good thing . It completes your tasks faster and makes sure your computer runs as quickly as possible.