Ridiculously High CPU Usage for Hardware Interrupts (screenshots)

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by pervnerve, Jun 27, 2007.

  1. pervnerve

    pervnerve Private First Class

    These are before and after screenshots of me selecting and starting a song up in iTunes-- note the Interrupt usage:

    http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~jmallen1/pics/interrupts.jpg

    I have a dual-core E6400, so that 47.26% you see there is more like 94% of the whole first core, as indicated by the performance tab of the task manager.

    http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~jmallen1/pics/perf.jpg
    (Note the processes running and memory usage.)

    When this happens (with the configuration shown in my Belarc profile below), the music slows down drastically. Listen to the album version of "The Rockafeller Skank" by Fatboy Slim at 4:07 for a perfect example of what I hear for EVERY song that I start. I start a song, 10 seconds into it does that, continues for another 10, then goes back to normal.

    It's not just music-- movies suffer, as well. iTunes seems to exacerbate the problem, since using foobar2000 seems to creep around the issue most of the time. It's obviously my actions triggering the high interrupt usage.

    The sound card is a Bluegears b-Enspirer (a very new card). It got good feedback, and it certainly has a great sound, but I suspected it was the main problem. I deactivated my C-Media Audio (the card) through DM. After restart, Windows found my other sound device, a firewire audio interface, and used it for default sounds. However, it too suffered from the random interrupt CPU spikes.

    Here's a link to my Belarc Advisor profile (with some of the software license info removed, obviously), prior to removing the b-Enspirer.

    Just tonight, I replaced the Bluegears card with my old Santa Cruz, and the audio stuttering has disappeared, but the ridiculously high interrupt CPU usage remains. It now seems that something else is causing the problem, but it's simply that the Bluegears card reacted more to the issue than does the Santa Cruz. The reason I still mention the card is obviously I'd like to be able to use the much higher quality sound card. I'd hate for $120 to have gone to waste.

    What can be causing such huge spikes in the interrupt usage? Is there any easy way to tell? What would be normal CPU usage for Hardware Interrupts? How can I get my old sound card back into the machine without it suffering?

    [And just to answer a few questions off the bat: yes, all my drivers were up-to-date; yes, all my harddrives are set to DMA mode (all four of them-- although I haven't ruled out a hard drive issue being the culprit); no, the problem is not the sound card.]
     
  2. pervnerve

    pervnerve Private First Class

    Anyone?
     
  3. jimmy_iz_god

    jimmy_iz_god Private E-2

    i would run a memory test, as faulty memory can cause strange problems like this.
     
  4. bigbazza

    bigbazza R.I.P. 14/12/2011 - Good Onya Geek

  5. pervnerve

    pervnerve Private First Class

    thanks guys =)

    these suggestions, unfortunately, I have already tried. I'm just gonna flatten her. Besides, most of my junk is on my other drives and I'd just be wiping 30GB after all my backing up.

    On top of that, I think the error may lie with one of my HDDs. I do have four, after all.
     

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