Massive CPU spike while playing and streaming video

Hey all. I'm currently playing GW on a dell XPS laptop with a second external monitor so that I can watch movies/tv while I'm playing. Recently while trying to stream netflix and play at the same time I've been running into some huge latency problems. Guild Wars ping will spike from it's average state (80-150 ms) to 4-8k ms, fps in both the client + the stream drops to 1-2 frames, and guild wars will begin sucking up huge amounts of processor resources (75-80% CPU when it usually sits around 20%). When I pause the stream and let the client sit for a minute or two, it returns to its normal ping and cpu usahe. This problem only occurs when attempting to stream video.

I've checked both flash and silverlight (both are up to date) and run malware scans. Neither seems to be the source of the issue. I'm going to try doing an -image of the client tonight (perhaps the .dat file has gotten corrupted somehow?) and if that doesn't work I'll start running system diagnostics on my video +audio cards. If you guys can think of anything else that might be the source of the problem, please let me know.

Specs: I'm running a Dell Studio XPS 1640 laptop, 2.66GHz intel core duo processor, 4 gigs of ram, windows 7 64bit. With these specs, it should be able to handle (and has in the past) gw + high quality video at the same time without breaking a sweat (let alone the shitty stuff i'm streaming over netflix). Not having any other performance issues.

your issue is probably caused by streaming your videos. video streams use up alot of bandwidth and makes ping suck if you're playing games in parallel. my guess is the latency spike causes guild wars to try and catch up and fill in the gaps, which causes the high amounts of cpu usage(whenever i experience this 'catchup', it looks like super speed gameplay).

i don't know of any useful tricks to stream videos and maintain low ping(i'm not sure it's even possible on one machine). so either use a 2nd machine to stream your videos (it will still lag your network, but it should be much less than running both on 1 pc) or download your videos instead of streaming them.

Did some testing before doing afresh install of guild wars. Same problem occurred when running .aavi, .mkv, and .mp4 off my system using GOM (no streaming). Video and GW client both would perform fine for a few minutes, then latency on GW client would get massive, CPU usage would shoot up, and fps on client + media player would plumment. I'm currently doing a fresh install + -image of guild wars, hopefully the problem is just a corruped .dat file and the reinstall will fix it. If not, I'm planning on running a backup tonight and doing some diagnostic tests tomorrow to see if there's something going on with my video card.

Just a thought, but maybe it has something to do with priorities. Either Netflix is being set as high priority, GW is being set to low priority, or a combo of both - although I don't know off-hand how that involves increased CPU usage for GW. I've often streamed YouTube (music) videos while playing GW without any problems.
... maybe Netflix sets it's own priority to "maximize your viewing experience."

I dunno.

that's kind of what happen to me after the game crashing making my cpu spiking up to 100 having netflix running downstairs (my dad has been using it at times).

ctrl alt delete to check running processes and confirm it's just gw and netflix sucking up resources. shut down all unwanted processes and see if that helps. do it one by one starting with antivirus. gotta be something since it use to work. update all sw and do complete scan in safemode.

As soon as you minimize the GW client it will spike your CPU you 50% and it will sit there, at 50% for the entire time the game is minimized, if you are trying to download / stream along with that, the extra CPU power is going to that, thats why your probably seeing 80% CPU,

I dont know why the GW client uses 50% CPU when minimized.