CPU Usage spiking up to 100% randomly

[Dogtor]

Recently had a hard drive die on me, so we installed a brand new one (Western Digital Caviar Green) and did a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Before the new hard drive, I could run Darksiders perfectly fine, but now when I try to play the game, my CPU will occasionally spike and the game will freeze momentarily. Time between spikes varies, as I can sometimes play for minutes without a spike and sometimes a spike occurs seconds after another spike. I also experience spikes when watching videos or just browsing the internet in Firefox.


My specs:

Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
MSI MS-7380 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2.66 GHz
nVidia GeForce 9500 GT
Dell E173FP (17" LCD, 1280x1024, 60Hz)
1 TB Western Digital Caviar Green
4 GB ram

[_I_]

its the green drive

those go to sleep, when idle and take a few seconds to weake up again

get a 7200rpm drive, greens are good for usb storage, reds are good for nas(network attached) storage
blue and black are good for internal

[Dogtor]

Początkowo opublikowane przez _I_:

its the green drive

those go to sleep, when idle and take a few seconds to weake up again

get it 7200rpm drive, greens are good for usb storage, reds are good for nas(network attached) storage
blue and black are good for internal

Thanks, glad I caught it early. Going to take it back in the morning and see if we can get a good one :)

[[UFO] rad87gn]

Yep, green are for power saving. "Green" for the environment. Blue for daily PC's and Black for speed. I have a blue and it's pretty fast. No problems gaming. Black will be even better.

[Tusken GA]

Yeah, like these guys said, definitely the green drive. When building a budget rig I always go for Blues. Reliability, speed, and relative affordability. A nice happy balance.