CPU limiting itself at 50%

[Lee123red]

I've had a home build system for a while now and everything has been fine, but recently i've noticed that in Task Manager, the CPU has been limited to 50%. thats including when its running high CPU demanding games like Fallout 3 and Crysis, it just simply wont go over 50%.

My system is as follows:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (dual core)
MotherBoard: ASUS M2N-MX SE Plus
Memory/Ram: 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400 (400 MHz)
GPU: 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT
Over-clocking: None
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3
HD: Seagate 160GB drive

Any ideas or suggestions for unlocking the CPU limit without overclocking or having to buy expensive new hardware would be appreciated, thanks.

[D.8080]

Go to power management, see if under your power profile there is max cpu limit set to 100%. If on 50% you know why.

This is a feature you have to check.

[Lee123red]

Location of power management, ive tried looking in the usual places, and the power options only basic options with nothing mentioned about CPU

[Chiefish]

You may also want to go into youre bios and check that both cores are enabled. I know on my m/b it is an option and might be on youres as well.

[Lee123red]

ok thanks, ill try that after ive finished up with this g.e.c.k level mod im doing.

[Qwerty]

It appears that only one core is fully used at this time. You have a dual core CPU - that's why the overal usage ratio is shown as 50%.

In my opinion it's fully normal. Have you checked the CPU usage during the playing? Surely not, because if you start the task manager the game will be preemted to the background and paused. That's why it's doesn't consume much of the CPU power. I'm experiencing the same behaviour of my Q6600 with four cores.

You can download and run a CPU benchmark (for example multiple instances of super PI) to see if all cores will be used.

[Lee123red]

both cores ARE being used, but only reaching 50% each. i know this because ive used task manager on top of my games when they are in full screen mode and while playing, and they STILL do not exceed 50%.

I've used several benchmarking programs and none of them told me things like what the maximum usage i can get from my cpu etc.

[Chiefish]

Try getting the program called Prime95 , it is a utility that will run both cores at 100% gaurenteed, if after running that and checking the system manager it still doesnt show you using 100% let us know beause its got to be somthing else limiting youre cpu usage. heres a link to get it.
windows 32bit http://mersenneforum.org/gimps/p95v259.zip
windows64 bit
http://mersenneforum.org/gimps/p64v259.zip