Vista: Set CPU Priority for Process
Vista allows you to set the priority by which programs receive CPU cycles. This explains the manual way of telling vista which programs should receive the most and the least priority.
For day to day use, this is not very important. However, if you frequently have large, demanding programs running, it can be helpful to direct vista when to focus CPU cycles toward or away from the program.
For example, usually if you are rendering video, the rest of your system will be very slow as the rendering program is taking priority. However, you can push the priority of the rendering program lower which will speed up other programs trying to run during this time.
Change a CPU priority in vista:
1. Bring up the Task Manager. I right-click on the taskbar and select task manager from the context menu; however, here are other ways of opening the task manager in vista.
2. Right-click the Process you want to change
3. You may have to confirm the Perform Administrative Tasks
4. Right-click again the process you want to change
5. Select Change Priority
6. Select the Priority you wish with Realtime as the highest and Low as the lowest.
This setting will only last as long as the process is active. If you restart the application, then the process will return to the normal default state.
Tags: admin, change, context_menu, cpu_cycles, default_state, Hardware, taskbar, task_manager, time_change, windows vista
Loading ...
Larry Miller on 03 Nov 2008 at 9:31 pm #
A Warning
Increasing the priority of a process will not normally improve it’s performance. If you have a CPU intensive program running it will normally be receiving virtually all of the CPU time already.
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT set the priority of such a program to Realtime. Many vital system processes run at a lower priority than this and they may not be able to run. This could create a lockup and require a reboot to regain control.
It is generally more useful to lower the priority of a CPU intensive process. This will increase the responsiveness of the system and impair the performance of the application only slightly.
Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA
Frost on 09 Aug 2009 at 2:07 am #
SO One of my programs, A video Game, runs on normal priorty intill it gets to a certain point and than it automaticly changes to Below normal priorty. this cuases the program to lag and get very very bugy. I manualy go in and change the priorty to normal or above normal and it will run fine, but than after a minute it resets it’s priorty back to below normal.
how do I fix this orchange this so it always runs as a normal or high priorty item