(09-19-2010, 05:23 PM)ellachen0417 Wrote: Off the top of my head, the only instances I know of cores being utilized 100% is during a really heavy video conversion task (those times when your PC becomes sluggish) and CPU stress tests - which is only used to drive your processor near its breaking point, or at least until that point where it starts to commit computational errors - you wouldn't want that to happen if you're only gaming.
Certain MAME games can stress your quad-core pretty hard (~100% CPU usage).
PCSX2 can also load your CPU up to 90%+ if you use the software renderer.