Did you installed the AMD CPU drivers? Windows XP won't throttle your CPU unless that drivers are installed and the energy options set according the readme.

older games had no concept of idling, and would just busy loop or run full throttle

Yes, i installed AMD CPU drivers. May be you mistake throttling for Cool'n'Quiet. In my case Cool'n'Quiet works just fine but my question is totally different. I made screenshot to explain my previous message. There is 100% CPU usage just in menu. Saw some people with Athlon64 on this forum. I wonder what CPU load do they have.

MMX wrote:

... What i want to say even if i get Pentium4 2,4GHz (for example) it will show less frames per second in any quake3 test. But CPU usage will be 60-65% maximum. ...

Was it a P4 with HyperThreading (HT)? Such chips will show lower CPU usage in such older games because the games aren't designed to utilize more than one thread.

If you have v-sync disabled and/or you are CPU limited, it is perfectly normal for the CPU to be maxed out in a menu like that. What fps is the menu running at?

MMX wrote:

Yes, i installed AMD CPU drivers. May be you mistake throttling for Cool'n'Quiet. In my case Cool'n'Quiet works just fine but my question is totally different. I made screenshot to explain my previous message. There is 100% CPU usage just in menu. Saw some people with Athlon64 on this forum. I wonder what CPU load do they have.

Cool'n'Quiet is basically CPU throttle (or at least enables it). AMD Athlon 64 will always run in XP at maximum clock unless those drives are installed. When installed, the OS is capable of reducing CPU frequency. My guess is that after installing the drivers maybe the OS can control the CPU better and get more accurate usage statistics.

So another questions would be... what frequency are you running at? Have you benchmarked your computer and compared to another equivalent (same CPU) computers?

This phenomenon is not Athlon 64 specific and has nothing to do with Cool 'n' Quiet. All 1 core/1 thread CPUs would behave the same. OP's Pentium 4 (as SW-SSG suggested) must be a Hyper Threading enabled CPU so it's a 1 core/ 2 threads variant. That's why it shows CPU usage somewhere between 50% - 100%. A real 2 cores/2 threads CPU like Athlon 64 X2 or Core 2 Duo would show exactly 50% CPU usage if nothing else is running.
QA3 uses 1 thread and by default uses no FPS cap so without V-sync forced in driver it fully uses 1 CPU core. I have attached a picture about a Core 2 Duo 's CPU usage with CPU affinity set to the first core:
As you can see the first core is fully used and overall CPU usage is exactly 50%. In case of Core 2 Quad the overall usage would be 25% and so on. Cool 'n' Quiet is not relevant here since even with different forced performance states by RMClock (e.g. minimum 800 or maximum 2200 MHz in case of A64 3400+) the CPU usage would be always the same, namely 100% on 1 core (only the performance/FPS would be different).

Go into console and type "/com_maxfps 125" to see if it makes a difference. Quake renders framerates 1000/x where x is a whole number. 1000/8 = 125. That should bring down CPU usage since it is uncapped by default. Also set "/cl_maxpackets 60" if you're playing online so you don't get network lag due to the engine trying to send as many packets as FPS you're getting.

SW-SSG wrote:

Was it a P4 with HyperThreading (HT)? Such chips will show lower CPU usage in such older games because the games aren't designed to utilize more than one thread.

Yes. Is that just difference for HyperThreading CPU and no-HyperThreading CPU?

cyclone3d wrote:

If you have v-sync disabled and/or you are CPU limited, it is perfectly normal for the CPU to be maxed out in a menu like that. What fps is the menu running at?

You can't see fps just in menu. I made quick test (with my settings) - 226,5fps.

Falcosoft wrote:

This phenomenon is not Athlon 64 specific and has nothing to do with Cool 'n' Quiet. All 1 core/1 thread CPUs would behave the same..

Perhaps just amd specific? 😀 kidding 😀 May be i read too much all those thing about program compilation mostly for intel. It's all depends from each other. Or may its a good optimization 😉 so on P4 2,4 with 100% usage i get much higher fps. IMHO, there's no matter what program uses CPU but, when it reaches 100% TDP is maximazed and i have so much heat as possible. That's why i have this question. Also i have win2003 sp2 what actually can't run properly even quake3. So, i thought may be WinXP can solve CPU usage. But i really don't wanna reinstall operating system, i made so many tweaks and fixes.

wiretap wrote:

Go into console and type "/com_maxfps 125" to see if it makes a difference..

It was just short example. Older games, mostly, don't allow play in window mode. I have already com_maxfps 125. Here is another screenshot with 100% 😀

MMX wrote:

SW-SSG wrote:

Was it a P4 with HyperThreading (HT)? Such chips will show lower CPU usage in such older games because the games aren't designed to utilize more than one thread.

Yes. Is that just difference for HyperThreading CPU and no-HyperThreading CPU?

Difference between HyperThreading-supported and/or multi-core CPUs vs non-HT and single-core CPUs, as someone said earlier:

Falcosoft wrote:

... All 1 core/1 thread CPUs would behave the same. OP's Pentium 4 (as SW-SSG suggested) must be a Hyper Threading enabled CPU so it's a 1 core/ 2 threads variant. That's why it shows CPU usage somewhere between 50% - 100%. A real 2 cores/2 threads CPU like Athlon 64 X2 or Core 2 Duo would show exactly 50% CPU usage if nothing else is running. ...

IMHO, there's no matter what program uses CPU but, when it reaches 100% TDP is maximazed and i have so much heat as possible. That's why i have this question. Also i have win2003 sp2 what actually can't run properly even quake3. So, i thought may be WinXP can solve CPU usage.But i really don't wanna reinstall operating system, i made so many tweaks and fixes.

There is absolutely no problem with your OS/CPU so do not reinstall anything.
The simplest solution for your problem is to force enable V-sync in your video card's driver panel.
"/com_maxfps 125" did not solve 100% CPU usage phenomenon on my system either. But by enabling V-sync CPU usage immediately dropped from 100% to 10% on my 3 GHz Core 2 Duo. If your current fps is 226 as you have written by enabling V-sync you would also get much lower CPU usage (assuming 60 Hz refresh rate).

I spent my free time to build a system from spare parts that i have and make some tests.

First i installed win2003 SP1 (i think SP1 should have better compatibility). And to run the q3 there still needed some tweaks. So, i had same CPU usage 😀 . I couldn't start 3D Mark 2001 because of fancy operating system and i uninstalled it 😀

I installed WinXp SP3 and made much more tests. I got the similar results. Thank for the tip about v-sync. How it's works depends on game, video driver and even game section) On some games i still have 100%. For some reason in quake2 640*480 v-sync OFF i have VERY low CPU usage. With same settings 800*600 already 100%.

So, everything is OK 😀