abit ic7 (bios ver. 16)

pentium 4C 2.4 @ 2.8 (HT enabled)

2x 512 ocz ddr400 cas2 (2-3-3-6)

radeon 9700np 333/315

windows xp sp1



hi guys, this has been bothering me forever. my cpu scores in 3dmarks '03/aquamark 3 are all on par with the norm. they are 650/9463 respectively. real world gaming performance verify this. however, when i'm executing non-gaming apps in XP, my CPU rarely operates above 90% one thing that stands out the most is video rendering/encoding. (although i don't know the cpu usage during gameplay, performance is on par with published benchmarks, so i assume it's operating at maximum)

right now, i'm encoding video through Virtual Dub. when i look under cpu usage, it's only operating at 50%. isn't there something wrong? why is it not utilizing 100% of my cpu when encoding video? the following picture might better explain things. at the time of screenshot one processor is maxed out and the other sitting pretty at 0% (one logical cpu, XP sees 2 due to hyperthreading). just a few minutes prior both were operating at 50%...but the total usage still reamined 50%. i've even tried to set it's priority to realtime/high in the processes tab but it does nothing. and processor affinity shows both cpus under use by Vdub.

http://home.cogeco.ca/~konig/usage.JPG

the only times i see >85% cpu usage is when multiple applications are working away. is this the nature of HT? does it only allow one application thread a certain amount of cycles? i get simialar results when rendering video with premiere 6. i dunno, something must be wrong. my old 2.4b @ 2.8 (non HT) was always 99-100% loaded when rendering video.

(i can't recall video redering performance/speed of the 2.4b @ 2.8. so i can't really compare redering times between the "b" and "c" versions to find out if the "c" is infact faster at 50% load than the "b" at 100% load...although synthetic gaming benchmarks ala 3dmarks show higher scores for the C at same speeds)


I've installed the neccessary intel chipset stuff from the install cd that came with the mobo. i have the latest (well, almost latest) bios rev. is there something i might be missing in a bios setting? please help me before i waste mad monies calling intel support long distance. thanks guys.