Low Cost High CPU

Cheap Tricks

What this boils down to is that the average CPU time is 10x greater than the cost of the query. While not terribly scientific, it may indicate query problems.

Query cost is an indication of how much CPU and I/O a query will need to run to completion. If you’re using a lot more CPU than SQL Server estimates, it could be a number of things.

• Parameter sniffing (inadequate plan for some variables)
• Black boxes (Functions, etc.)
• Poorly costed Key Lookups
• Incorrect parallelism settings
• Non-SARGable predicates