Running games at higher priority?

Is it good idea to run games at higher priority setting than Normal? I have played Oblivion set to High priority without any problems. I'm still not quite sure if there's any performance gains but there's certainly no losses.. I have not many, only 20 processes running in the backround. Tray apps for Powerstrip, Ati Tray Tools and Razer mouse being the only non-system processes.

Priority can be set through task manager, but .bat file is better for easier running. For example Oblivion.bat:
cmd /c start /HIGH Oblivion.exe

 

I once tried running the game America's Army at High priority. I could not reload in the game, or switch to another weapon. I have not tried any other game.

Sometimes settings the application to a higher priority makes the program run unstable. But like you stated not all games have this program.

Charlie

 

Yes, it can make a difference. But only if you're running something CPU-heavy in the background. If you're defragging or running an antivirus-scan, you'll see a big performance boost in your game by running it at higher priority.

But in "normal" cases? Nope, no difference.
The priority only dictates how often the OS should try to run your process. But take a look in task manager when playing a game. Your game already takes 99% of the CPU time. So no matter how high priority you set, you'll never be able to achieve more than a 1% speedup. (And even if you manage that, you do it by starving other important processes that actually needed that 1% for smooth running of your computer. Consequences might be winamp stuttering, or just instability because important bits of Windows aren't being run)

So no, it's not a good idea, unless 1) you want to ensure decent performance even with a CPU-heavy process in the background (and even then, you should prefer to leave the game at normal, and instead set the background process to low), and 2) you know exactly what you're doing.
If #1 is not the case, there is simply nothing to be gained.

And finally, NEVER ever set anything to realtime priority. Never.

Did I mention that it's a really bad idea to do, unless you like having to physically restart your computer on the power button?

 

I have a reg file so i can rightclick on anything and set it to high, above normal, below normal and low priority. Also real time, but that setting causes hard disk thrashing. High does that sometimes too.

whats real time for if it only crashes your computer?

 

It doesn't crash your computer. At worst, it will simply lock up your computer (It'll run, it just won't respond to anything)

The point about realtime is that it runs *only* that process, never anything else. That's great if:
1) You have something that must not be interrupted (Happens pretty rarely, at least on regular PC's. Nuclear plants and air traffic controllers tend to use similar methods to ensure they run *all the time*, but I really doubt they're running Windows )
2: You want to benchmark. Some benchmark programs run their test in realtime mode, simply so they're sure the result won't be slowed down by messy stuff like people moving the mouse or pressing ctrl-alt-del, or having to play a mp3 in winamp.
3: If you have a system that's always running a lot of CPU-heavy stuff, and you want to temporarily ensure that only one of them is given 100% of the CPU time.

The main trick is that this should only be done with programs that terminate after a while. A benchmark test only last so long, and after that, it'll switch back to normal priority letting you control your computer again.

A game doesn't automatically exit, and requires user input to exit manually. SO if you set that in realtime mode, you're screwed. Windows won't have time to listen to mouse or keyboard input, so you can't make the game exit. And it won't do so by itself either.

 

Ive done this to numerous games to see if there is any difference. I have seen absolutly no performance gain, but in most games, setting the priority to high makes usb devices run extremely poor. When playing HL2 in high priority, my mouse constantly shut off, and moved very choppy, it is a wireless one via USB.

 

I used to play Americas Army on two different notebooks with the priority set to RealTime (didnt really know what it was for, it just seemed to...well...give it more priority) and ive never had a lockdown. Didnt see any noticable difference in performance...but didnt have any CPU trashing problems either

 

If it was on the system listed in your signature, I'd guess it's because it only used one core, leaving the other free to perform all the background tasks.

Otherwise, well, it's hard to say exactly. I was merely explaining the possible downsides. Sometimes you might be able to get away with it anyway (I'm guessing that if the realtime process is stalled for some reason, other processes get a chance to execute while waiting for the realtime process to resume)

 

I once tried to run FEAR in realtime priority. It started a bit slower but then ran ok. When I checked from taskmanager, the priority was somehow automatically set to normal. So I don't know is it even possible to run games at realtime in my system.

 

Yes, with only 1 core + setting an app to real time = IO death. You'll literally be saying to system devices such as your USB host controller "Hey pal, I don't have any time for you, get lost". I'm surprised nobody with a single core processor has tried this, rebooted, and posted some kind response. I'd advise against running administrative or system tools such as disk defrag and messing with the priority of your processes. Baaaaaad things can happen...at best you're reading/writing to the HDD while you game, which messes up the defrag.

 

Only once with COH at Realtime.....and i got the famed BSOD in XP...which is really rare for my lappie...and never did it again

 

Im afraid im in the odds against many of you guys
One of the two systems i mentioned was an LG P1 with a 1.83 Core duo, which might explain the reason for no problems (as jalf said)...but the other one was an old Dell Inspiron 9100 with a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 (Prescott Core) which is a single core processor. Still no lockdown and Americas Army ran well (used to play it at all settings max, native resolution 1280x800)