i5-2500k CPU usage

When I'm playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 my CPU usage reaches to 99% occasionally. When this happens, the game freezes up for a few seconds. In addition to the high CPU usage, I experience a similar lag every time I start up the game and spawn for the first time (this happens consistently). Anyone know what's happening here? My CPU temps are normal. I have 8GB of RAM and a Samsung F3 1TB Spinpoint HDD. 6950 2GB GPU

Thanks for any replies.

Have you tried different 3D drivers? Different driver settings?

I haven't played this game to know how it normally behaves, but I would try different driver versions to see if it has any impact on the game behavior. If there isn't anything newer, I'd drop back to quite a bit older and see if it still does the same thing... If it has no effect, that rules out the possibility of a driver issue.

Is there anything else running while gaming? I'd try shutting down any antivirus or other items which could be firing up in the background and interfering.