I purchased an AMD Phenom II x2 550 Blk, 3.1 GHz runing on a GA-MA785GMT-UD2h motherboard and running Windows 7 prof (64bit). I was told that I would never utilize both cores completely. I am finding this is not true. My processor maxes out 100% on both cores quite frequently. Start up, trying to scan a picture, and other programs will spike my CPU usage to 50-100%.

Is this normal or is there something wrong with my processor. Should I have gotten a Quad core instead of a Dual core or would the samr thing still be happening?

Thanks