any ideas how to disable cpu while mining with gpu in random helix pools. It seems to me that with every pool while mining, cpu pops to 100%, only dwarfpool used just gpu so far. Others used gpu+cpu, but cpu was not visually shown in cgminer
I have experienced similar high cpu usage. On an i5 with 2 r9 290s the cpu was pegged at 60%, and for 4 r9 290 the i5 100%.
The CPU is not directly being used by the miner, it is indirectly impacted by all of the data movement. Despite this, the overall power use is still less than scrypt.
Ive also found that you can use the miner like a pc when mining at full tilt, which is another benefit of sha3