CPU Usage spikes
 

Spec block:
Win 2k
Athalon 64 bit 3000(~2 GHz)
1 Gig ram
Happens when I'm using Opera.

I switched over to Opera about ten days ago and I've been very happy so far. Tabbed browsing, the gestures, whatever. However, yesterday I noticed considerable slowdown while using it. I've run a full virusscan and ad-aware (nothing out of the first, tracking cookies from the second) and rebooted, obviously. While I am typing this there's a lag between what I type and when it appears on the screen, as if I were working over a slow connection. Watching the task manager's performance graph is like watching an EEG: evenly spaced spikes of 100% CPU usage. When I watch the processes themselves, I can see it is Opera which is eating between 40 and 99% of the processor at regular intervals, with no corresponding action (by me at least) in the browser. Has anyone else seen this happen? Any theories on what it might be? If I can't figure it out I'll probably try uninstalling and reinstalling Opera, and then if that doesn't work, Opera loses, I guess.

I would try IE and Firefox and see if anything similar happens. If not, I would switch to one of those.

Maybe Opera wants to connect somewhere and the firewall won't let it?

It does look like you are alone

The link below is from the opera forums...
link

Thanks spindles. I should have mentioned I'm using 8.5, the latest version. Oh well. I tried a reinstall, same problem. Guess I'll go back to IE (ugh!) until they release a new version of Opera for me to try.

Why not use Firefox? If i may ask? Also were you on any particular websites when the spikes occurred?