If the taskmanager thingie shows mIRC as using up all of that cpu time, you should check what scripts you are using, and maybe unload or disable a few of them you suspect of hogging your pc. It could be that you are in a few very busy channels or the network has (or just recovered from) a netsplit, where lots of nicks all join or quit at the same time.
If you don't find answers, here's a not-so-nice way of seeing what script is causing the problems: when you find your cpu at 100%, try hitting ctrl-break in mIRC and check your status windows to see if some script was halted and if the cpu drops. If this happens in the same script almost each time, you have probably found your cpu hog