Why does my CPU max out during simple tasks?

I started playing a winter sport that supported my pentium 4 2.8 GHz processor. The specs on the game say it requires 500 MHz to play. When I start up the game it sucks up 99% of my processor and act as if it is only getting a fourth of what it requests. Any idea what I stipulation to do to correct this? It does this with most of my games in a minute. I am running XP SP2 with everything updated via Microsoft update.



Thanks

-Simba

Why does my CPU max out during simple tasks?

It say that is what is required but usually the specs are different for what is in truth needed. Windows xp I believe says it will run near 128mb of memory but it won't, will but very slow.
It sounds to me approaching you need a hot graphics card, because often times you'll find that it is a bland graphics card, and even a basic upgrade will upgrade performance drastically.
A computer activity is definitely not a simple errand. If you don't have a loyal video card, that could be the reason. Games usually do bear up most of the processing power.
In addition to the graphics card, check if you own enough RAM. (And the virtual Memory is set up to the correct levels). Too much !/O on the disk might be slowing down operation,