SNMP CPU Utilization in multi CPU servers.

I am currently evaluating Application Manager and am extremely impressed by this software.

I just have one question/problem. I am monitoring Quad CPU machines and I did some research and it seems that SNMP reports the CPU utilization by summing the cpu usage and giving a "total" percentage.

So for 4 CPUs this percentage would be (# of CPU's * 100) or for 4 CPUs 400%.

So if 50% of each CPU is being used then that would be 200/400.

The gauge on the performace monitor of a Linux machine only goes to 100% so on servers that are heavily used it seems that the CPU's are always maxed out at 100% which isn't the case.

Is there any work around for this or any other option? I know if I use SSH monitoring instead of SNMP I will get the CPU usage from the TOP command but I would rather not use this.

Thank you for your time.

Peter D.