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Well, I like to measure the time my cpu is used by 100% (+/- a margin). In other words: I want to know how much time a day my CPU is the bottleneck and I am sitting here waiting for results.

I want a faster computer and our admin says we are not even using our current cpu but I think it is a significant time a day I spend waiting for my CPU.

So what tools exist and which do you recommend?

Fabian Barney
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  • @Downvoters What's the reason for downvoting? Missing some infos? – Fabian Barney Jul 09 '12 at 15:03
  • I would be happy to see this migrated to superuser or whatsever more appropriate site when this is the reason the question got closed/downvoted. – Fabian Barney Jul 09 '12 at 16:04
  • We generally don't migrate "bad" questions, and this is pretty much a "shopping" question, which would be off topic at SuperUser too, (the closest match for where your question should be migrated to) so it got closed instead of migrated somewhere that would also just close it anyway. – HopelessN00b Jul 13 '12 at 23:57
  • Well, I do not agree with the "shopping question" argument. Just have a look at Chopper3's answer. Even when you look at the related questions on this site here there are several very similar questions for linux which a) seem to belong to this site, b) did not get closed and c) upvoted. Never saw such questionable justice on stackoverflow, but on my first question here ... – Fabian Barney Jul 23 '12 at 13:39

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Totally the wrong site for this kind of thing but basically run 'perfmon' from the Start menu, click on 'Data Collection Sets', right click on 'Used Defined', select 'New' and 'Data Collection Set'. Give it a name and select "Create Manually" then Next, tick "Performance counter" but leave the other two blank', select Next, click Add - from the next screen select 'Processor' and 'Total' from the two panels, then click Add>> then select OK, then Finish.

If you then right click on the new Data Collector Set set's name and select Start it'll start logging your CPU utilisation. Leave this running for however long you like, just select Stop in the same way to stop it.

Once you have this big log of your usage and have stopped it you can view it by clicking on the 'Performance Monitor' option at the top of that window, then either click on the 'View Log Data' icon (or press Control & L), click on 'Log Files', find the collector data log and select OK. Then click on the big green + plus icon and select the Processor and Total options again, then click the Add>> button and ok. This should then show you a bunch of data about your CPU/s during this time window - it's the '% Processor Time' you care about, you may need to deselect every other counter but that one and then right click on that counter selecting 'Scale Selected Counters' to see the graph properly.

If this proves that your machine is indeed busy then you can send a print-screen to your guy explaining the situation.

Chopper3
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    Also note that windows 7 means likely UI - you will NOT get 100% cpu usage, but WILL get full core usage on a core or tw0. Lacking multitasking applications (most UI applications do not multitask well) this likely means you run out of capacity on a single or to cores, but the CPU is nominally not highly taxes. This is bad thinking from both sides - mostly like "I need a faster car" to "you do not use all the seats in the car all the time". So, not only check total, also check maximum core usage. – TomTom Jul 09 '12 at 15:19
  • I imagine this got downvotes as it's really a question for superuser.com. – Chopper3 Jul 09 '12 at 15:23
  • @TomTom Thanks. I've the gadget 'CoreMeter' installed and see that both cores are often at 100%. Most time 0-2%, but a significant time at 100% both. But I like to measure how often this really happens and how long. I'll pay attention to check for core usage and total usage. – Fabian Barney Jul 09 '12 at 15:25
  • @Chopper3 Ok, but why they're not just flagging the question so it can be moved to a better place? That's the way I know it from stackoverflow.com. Nevertheless thanks for your answer. – Fabian Barney Jul 09 '12 at 15:27
  • It's also worth you knowing Fabian that not that many pieces of desktop code can make use of more than a couple of cores, things like Office etc. just won't benefit with more than two unless there's a lot more going on. Databases, hypervisors, CGI-type tools and some development kits will use more than two cores but not always. – Chopper3 Jul 09 '12 at 15:27
  • @FabianBarney - that IS how you flag it to get migrated - maybe read the FAQ? – Chopper3 Jul 09 '12 at 15:28
  • Using Eclipse, Tomcat, Apache Webserver, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Outlook most of the time. Tomcat republishing and Java code compilation are the most cpu intensive tasks I am doing several times an hour. – Fabian Barney Jul 09 '12 at 15:34
  • Eclipse can use a couple of cores quite hard, no idea what you have today but sounds like you need a quad-core or maybe a tiny bit more/better - make sure you have enough memory (it's super cheap these days) and a swap from HDD to SSD often feels like a CPU upgrade, it's usually the biggest change you can do to a machine. – Chopper3 Jul 09 '12 at 15:36
  • @Chopper3 Ah ok, on stackoverflow we have `Flag -> It does not belong to here -> Off-Topic -> Select appropriate stackexchange site` for this. Maybe this is not the case here. So I am sorry. @Topic SSD i already have - was the bottleneck before. :) – Fabian Barney Jul 09 '12 at 15:38
  • We have Flag/it needs moderator attention but migrations are from the close option - guess people didn't like your question I suppose - don't worry about it – Chopper3 Jul 09 '12 at 15:44