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    Limiting CPU Usage?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Peon, Sep 21, 2009.

  1. Peon

    Peon Notebook Virtuoso

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    I have a program that always uses 100% CPU even though it's not necessary. Naturally, this is causing everything else to slow down.

    Is there a way to restrict a program's CPU usage through the OS? The program runs smoothly on a Pentium 3, so as little as 10% CPU usage should be more than enough.
     
    Peon, Sep 21, 2009
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  2. Kocane

    Kocane Notebook Deity

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    well perhaps making it only use one core and priority set to low might help.. i usually do that
     
    Kocane, Sep 21, 2009
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  3. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    I really, REALLY like PRIO ( http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html) when necessary to adjust process priority.

    Prio does a lot more and it works on XP, Vista, and Win7.
     
    newsposter, Sep 21, 2009
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  4. Peon

    Peon Notebook Virtuoso

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    The machine in question is single-core, sadly. Nonetheless, thanks for the priority suggestions, I had completely forgotten you can do that, and PRIO looks very interesting.

    It's a shame the CPU can't be partitioned the way a hard disk can.
     
    Peon, Sep 22, 2009
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  5. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    cpus can be partitioned, even (in theory) single cores. The cpu needs to support amd or intel virtual machine extensions and you need software to take advantage of it.

    as you suspect, this is hardly worth the effort on a single core, but you might want to read up on the machine extensions as well as core partitioning, virtual machines, threads, processes, priority setting, etc.
     
    newsposter, Sep 22, 2009
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