Poor performance on XPS M1330

I've been noticing that my performance on my XPS M1330 has been much slower than it's usual. I use the CPU meter gadget on my sidebar to keep track of my usage and it commonly jumps to 95-100% and stays there for some time before dropping back to 30-40% (which is my usual CPU usage while playing games). Whenever I check Windows Task Manager to see what it chewing up my CPU, the processes list shows that the programs I am using are using less than 50% of my CPU total, while the CPU gadget and Windows Task Manager (at the bottom bar) claims my CPU usage is at 100%. 

This morning I had 14 tabs open on Google Chrome (all from the same forum) along with my usual Java based game open (with the lowest possible settings on it) and I was using 35-40% of my CPU yet 30 minutes later I had 2 tabs open on Google Chrome (other 12 were closed some time ago) along with my usual Java based game open again and my CPU was maxing out at 100% for about 10 minutes (Windows Task Manager process list still said I was using less than 50% though) and then the usage later dropped to 30%. I have only had this problem for a couple months now, before that I never had any programs with running the Java game on the highest possible detail settings, along with multiple internet tabs open and multiple MSN conversations.

I have tried both wireless and wired internet and I have reformatted my laptop a week ago, and the performance degraded after less than an hour of use after each attempt. It seems that there might be a driver conflict or something running in the background that does not show on the process list that is chewing up my CPU or maybe something as simple as something wrong with my Java.