Running the non EE version of BG1 my cpu idles at 45c in game it reaches 70c

i7 950
windows 7 home premium

Tried compatibility mode with no luck

You might want to check out this post. It looks like some people have reported that the game will use all the resources of one core and can cause the system to run hot.

Unfortunately, that thread does not appear to have any accepted solutions either....

Old game, only uses one core, so, maybe you can uses the configs for reduces the uses of the processor to less than a 1 GHz.

P.d. the first multi-core systems were unable to run BG2.

It's probably also worth noting that the Enhanced Editions are designed to use less CPU.

Does the EE use multiple cores? I really want to play BG but the game is slowly killing my CPU :/

The other option, if you are not afraid of rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands into it would be to try gemRB. It's an open source implementation of the Infinity Engine. I have never tried running this on windows, but they do have a Windows version. It would require some effort on your part to get the game running, but you wouldn't have to fork over some more money for BG:EE

check this post: http://www.gog.com/forum/baldurs_gate_series/100_cpu_usage_modern_computer_whats_up/post5 That should be enough for your as the I7 are already above 1 GHz, setting your processor to only 80% of his power should be more than enough for BG

On GNU/Linux systems you can use cpulimit to cap a process use of the CPU to any percentage.
Maybe there is an alternative for WIndows somewhere…

http://freecode.com/projects/cpulimit