Erratic displays of CPU usage

[kd5]

I have a program (WinRam Turbo) which not only frees RAM, but also displays CPU usage, memory load, and page file usage. As I look at the CPU usage display, it's jumping from 0% to 40% every 1/2 second or so. Is it normal for CPU usage to fluctuate like that, with no actions being made on my part, just sitting here watching it jump?

[galaxian]

What you are seeing it the CPU required by WinRam to perform it's thing!!

Get rid of it.

Windows does not need free memory in order to run. Free memory is wasted memory.

BUT, if you like exercising your swapfile and harddrive, keep running it.

[nightfishing]

A number of apps that read CPU usage will do this, it is a bug.

Not sure what causes it, but it may or may not be showing actual CPU usage.

Jumps betweeen 0 and 40 could very well be accurate (in part to reasons stated above), but often these apps will show full 100% spikes quite often which are not always accurate.

To see this in action, just run Windows System monitor.

Open up CPU usage and watch it; depending on your system the readings will vary, mine is always high due to my RAID, but it will be pretty stable.

Open up anothe view of CPU usage in System Monitor (so that, now, there will be 2) and this one will really freak out(probably pin itself to 100%.


All in all, I am not sure whay this happens, but....

As Galaxian said, don't run those silly little RAM tools anyway; they are useless running in the background. I have mixed feelings about using them to recover RAM (as an open-run-close type of thing). I never really thought they helped much, but since they weren't running in the background, they didn't hurt much, either.

If you a better view of CPU usage, try ATM (Another Task Manager).

[kd5]

Thanks nightfishing. I don't have it running in the background, only use it when I need it. It does seem to help at times. I have a previous version on disk which doesn't include CPU usage displays, etc., I'm considering uninstalling this version in favor of the previous one. BTW, I feel it does have its benefits. Saves me from having to shut down & reboot sometimes..... Thanks again, -kd5-