multi-core question????

[liquidmonkey]

i have a core i7 920 and use as a utility to monitor when each of the 4 cores is being used.

i have noticed that very very seldom do all four cores get used and even more seldom does a core ever go above 20% or 40%. maybe this is normal and i don't get how multi-cores are supposed to work but i thought that when a program such as photoshop, lightroom, VLC (playing 1080p movies) or a game needs more power then ALL CORES would be used and it would show well over 50% usage.

some tasks take too long IMHO and the monitor shows the cores just around 5 or 10%. shouldn't they be at over 50% to speed things up?

is it possible to force core usuage at all?

 

[Grantofhell]

It's possible that windows is clocking down your computer in times that it would call "idle" to sub 2GHz as it did with mine until I turned that feature "off" in BIOS.
I turned CPU Thermal Control, C1E Enhanced Halt State, and Intel SpeedStep off. All of those features clock your processor down in idle to save power but can take some time to clock back up.