On some hardware platforms and operating systems, CPU frequency scaling may cause CPU usage reporting to be highly misleading. This happens in situations when the host CPU load is significant but not heavy, such as between 15% to 30% of the maximum.

Most operating systems determine CPU usage in terms of time spent, measuring for example how many nanoseconds the systems or a process was active within one second. However, in order to save energy, systems can significantly scale down CPU speed when the system is not fully loaded. When the CPU is running at for example one half of its maximum speed, the same number of instructions will take roughly twice as long to execute compared to running at full speed.

Depending on the specific hardware and host OS, this effect can very significantly skew the CPU usage reported by the OS. The reported CPU usage can be several times higher than what it would have been had the CPU been running at full speed. The effect can be observed both on the host OS and in a guest OS.