Robert Davis looks at the CAP_CPU_PERCENT option in Resource Governor:
The need for this setting came about because MAX_CPU_PERCENT is not applied unless the server is busy. This could lead to a situation where queries in a low priority resource pool starts running while the server is idle and are allowed to consume all the CPU they can. Then high priority queries spin up, and they can’t immediately get the CPU they need due to the low priority queries not being capped. CAP_CPU_PERCENT came along and was designed to set a hard limit that the queries in a pool could not go over even if the server is idle. For example, if you cap the CPU at 25%, the queries in the pool will not exceed 25% no matter how idle the server is.
Problem solved, right?
When the end of a section is a yes/no question, the answer is usually “no.” Read on before this burns you.