sp_who2 displays funky CPU usage on pentium4 server

[louis]

I've got a new server with Pentium4 xeon processors. I've used sp_who2
for quite a while on my old server -- to look at CPU and IO usage. On
the new server, the CPU times are huge -- although actual performance
is quite good. I know sp_who2 is an undocumented proc. Has anyone
experienced this or is it just me?

[Erland Sommarskog]

Re: sp_who2 displays funky CPU usage on pentium4 server

louis (louisducnguyen @gmail.com) writes:[color=blue]
> I've got a new server with Pentium4 xeon processors. I've used sp_who2
> for quite a while on my old server -- to look at CPU and IO usage. On
> the new server, the CPU times are huge -- although actual performance
> is quite good. I know sp_who2 is an undocumented proc. Has anyone
> experienced this or is it just me?[/color]

sp_who2 gets the data from master..sysproc esses. It is difficult to say
what the changes are due to. But if the processes stays connected for a
long time, you will see high numbers.

One possible cause is that there are parallel query plans in use. The
optimizer appears to be fond of parallelism, but the parallel plans are
unfortunately always that effective.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarsk og.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/productdoc/2000/books.asp