High CPU usage on ASUS A8N32SLI-Deluxe with SLI? Try this.

A.Balthazor · nFHQ Member

If you use SLI video cards and are experiencing high CPU usage due to deferred procedure calls (DPCs) and interrupts, it MAY be caused by the PEG Link mode trying to OC your video cards beyond what may be able to handle.

Try setting PEG Link to normal; I had 30% or more CPU cycles being taken up with DPCs and hardware interrupts, but setting PEG Link mode to normal completely eliminated this. I also haven't seen any of the BSODs I was occasionally getting with SLI.

The DPCs and hardware interrupts were occuring with the PEG Link mode set to Auto.

I had tried other troubleshooting measures (checking power cables, re-seating cards, checking SATA cables, etc.) to no avail. Changing the PEG Link mode helped a lot.

If you have high CPU usage and your task manager doesn't show a lot of applications using the CPU, then you can use the Microsoft / Sysinternal utility Process Explorer to check your CPU usage. This program will tell you if CPU cycles are being eaten up by DPCs and hardware interrupts. (DPCs are essentially requests your system is making but aren't being serviced properly by your hardware; these requests don't go away, but end up in a queue and your CPU keeps trying to process them, resulting in a lot of wasted CPU time if they NEVER get processed properly.)