Recently my Task Manager has been showing that my Q6600 Quad Core is at or around 30-35% USAGE with nothing running. I did swap out Graphic cards recently and I at first thought that was the problem but I have tried uninstalling and installing the drivers multiple times. I'm new to ATI (Radeon HD 3870) and not really sure the proper way to install their cards, seems more confusing than Nvidia (swaped with a friend my 8800GT to try out 3870, i could get it back if that may solve problem). My temps have also gone haywire, up in the 80's while doing nothing but idle. (CPU) A way to adjust the CPU fan would also help, i have speed fan but it doesn't respond to commands in speedfan.

System Idle process seems to be 90 CPU most the time. Loaded Fail-Safe defaults on my Gigabyte EP35-DS3L mobo to see if that helped anything but it didn't. I only noticed this problem after the card was put in, but it began a week after installation.

Really anoying problem, BF2 is choppy, CoD4 struggles, should be running max'd out with no prob.

Dual boot, XP 32 Media Center, and XP64. Let me know if you need more specs. Doubt its a virus because i haven't DOWNLOADED anything strange recently.Having suffered ''mystery'' CPU activity in past - my best suggestion is go on a tracking down mission within processes ....... see what is taking what and see too if temp removal of a process can have any useful effect.

The ATI install should not usually be too problematic ... once the catalyst center is in and running all should be OK.  Unless there is maybe some conflict lurking - again a tracking down deal possibly.I had this problem a while back, it was due to a hardware fault. I used a process explorer to find the hard ware at fault so that it could be disabled.

http://www.download.com/Process-Explorer/3000-2094_4-10223605.html

Hardware faults would be shown under Hardware interrupts. Well here is a screen shot for the explorer, it does show some faults, most it is at is around 8. Procedure calls is high, which is what led me to believe it was a driver issue. How can you 'see' the interrupts and figure them out? I do have the trial version of avast and it has been bugging my to register a new copy, maybe it is that trying to find updates or something. Thanks for the help so far.

**edit My bad, forgot the image


That does seem to point towards a driver issue. Have you tried other drivers for the new card, old or new?Well, I tried a old beta driver my friend said was good, and I used that i believe for a little while, then I wasen't SUE if it was actually working or not so i went to the ATI site and got the latest one. Would a system restore work?Well I think that this is starting to go a little out of my league. I'm not great with driver conflicts (looks like a driver conflict causing a hardware fault) but that's going into the realms of opinion. Maybe another member can help you further.

A system restore may fix the issue (restoring the original non-conflicting drivers), but I'm afraid that I can't be of much more help.Is it safe to assume to downloaded the windows XP 64-bit driver, as opposed to a 32-bit one? Quote

My temps have also gone haywire, up in the 80's while doing nothing but idle.

System Idle process seems to be 90 CPU most the time.