Windows Task Manager makes it easy to see how much of your CPU resources a particular running application is taking. Unfortunately, the information provided is real-time usage and in some situations that measurement isn’t entirely useful.  CPU usage of an application can spike or otherwise show sustained usage over a brief time that can skew your perception of what actually is going on. However, capturing the average CPU usage over a period of time for any given application is not possible directly through Task Manager.

Average CPU Cycles is a portable application that alleviates that slight deficiency in Task Manager’s functionality. The utility has the capability to calculate the average cycles from the process’ first execution – whether or not Average CPU Cycles was running at that time. In addition to tracking and displaying the results from inception, you can also define and capture during a user specified time period – if you wanted to capture a particular process routine during an applications execution. It should also be mentioned that Average CPU Cycles is capable of handling processors that scale up or down their clock speed depending upon system load!

Using the software couldn’t be easier – from the application window locate and select the process name you wish to monitor. The measurement can then be calculated from Process start or from Now by clicking the appropriate button.

Down the right-hand side of the program you will notice a slider control. The slider will control the time interval period of which to capture the CPU performance metrics. The interval defaults to 1 second – meaning Average CPU Cycles will capture the CPU usage every 1 second. Moving the slider downward will increase the interval period and perhaps lead to a more accurate assessment of the process’ CPU usage.

Average CPU Cycles works in all recent releases of Windows, though for XP the download link is different as XP uses a different manner for CPU usage calculation.

Download Average CPU Cycles