Precisely. The cpu is running at full power to run the game as fast as it can.. it's been my experience that it will only run at something below 100% if you are capping the framerate or something else (such as a video card for example) is bottlenecking you.
Speaking of AOE3.. I got that free with my vid card, any good?
LOL nah im at work, but its an AMD 64 3200+ @ 2.5GHz 1GB DDR Kingston HyperX, and no it only runs at 100% while playing the game. no smoke, and temps stay down so im not too worried about it, but its annoying.
well when i play a game the cpu usage is most of the time at 5-10%, and that's usually halo. fs9, sometimes at 15%, halo & custom edition at the same time, about 20 or less.