Forced to prioritize games for smooth play

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montezuma

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 3, 2006
Messages
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I have a Phenom 9600 and 4GB of RAM. When I play newer games, I'm often forced to go into Task Manager and set the game to high or real time in order to get smooth performance. The most intensive process I have running in the background is Azureus, but I've had this problem even with most of my background apps closed. This has happened with an 8800GTS, an ATI 4850, and two 4850s in xfire. Is there a driver or something I can install that can better manage my processor? Is there a setting I can change, is there something I'm doing wrong? It's very tiresome to have to set that every time I want to play a game that isn't 6 years old.

Edit: I've played games recently such as Test Drive Unlimited that ran smoothly on my old X2 3800+ (on the system that's in my sig still, actually, and also had Azureus running regularly in the background.) It's choppy on my new one, and like games such as Crysis needs to be prioritized.
 
Do you have your system set to application priority instead of OS/background services priority (a.k.a. Desktop Mode instead of Server Mode or Mobile Mode)?
 
Neurofreeze: Yes.

Morkboy:
I've had this problem even with most of my background apps closed.
Click to expand...

kioras: I've been on Win XP 32-bit most of the time for 7 years. My short spat with Windows 7 didn't last too long, mostly because it wasn't quite completed at the time and was missing some things I like to have.
 
How long has it been doing this?
Has anything changed or been installed/updated around that time?
Drivers updated?
Scanned for any malware or viruses?
Run "msconfig" and see what programs are in startup - remove the unnecessary ones.

How are your CPU/GPU temps? Sometimes thermal throttling can make it slow down like that (like a dusty heatsink).
 
It's always done this with the Phenom. My OS configuration isn't really any different, everything is up to date, and it does this from fresh installs. Temps are well within limits.
 
Just make a custom batch file per game, and launch from that. Here is an example of what I use...

Code: 
NET STOP "PRINT SPOOLER" /Y
NET STOP "DYNDNS UPDATER SERVICE"
TASKILL.exe AWC.exe
TASKILL.exe OBJECTDOCK.exe
TASKILL.exe WINVNC.exe
TASKILL.exe TOPDESK.exe
TASKILL.exe EGUI.exe
START /WAIT /HIGH AssassinsCreed_Dx9.exe
NET START "DYNDNS UPDATER SERVICE"
NET START "PRINT SPOOLER"
NET START "TCP/IP PRINT SERVER"
START C:\Progra~1\ESET\ESETNO~1\egui.exe
START C:\Progra~2\AMD\UltraVNC\WINVNC.exe
START C:\Progra~2\AMD\TOPDESK\TOPDESK.exe
START C:\Progra~2\AMD\OBJECTDOCK\OBJECTDOCK.exe
START C:\Progra~2\AMD\AWC\AWC.exe /h
EXIT

NET STOP = Stops services I don't need while gaming.

TASKKILL = Kills background apps I don't need while gaming.

START /WAIT /HIGH "Program Name.exe" = Starts the program at a certain priority level. I have /HIGH set here, but if you find your keyboard / mouse inputs are laggy , you should use /ABOVENORMAL . The WAIT portion of the file instructs the batch file to stay open while the game is being played.

NET START & START Commands = Starts all services, and apps back up once I have finished the game.
 
Hmm, that should work quite well, actually. I'll look into it. I wish I didn't have to do something like this, though... my processor is over twice as powerful as my last one and yet it's doing things like this.
 
montezuma said:
I have a Phenom 9600 and 4GB of RAM. When I play newer games, I'm often forced to go into Task Manager and set the game to high or real time in order to get smooth performance. The most intensive process I have running in the background is Azureus, but I've had this problem even with most of my background apps closed. This has happened with an 8800GTS, an ATI 4850, and two 4850s in xfire. Is there a driver or something I can install that can better manage my processor? Is there a setting I can change, is there something I'm doing wrong? It's very tiresome to have to set that every time I want to play a game that isn't 6 years old.

Edit: I've played games recently such as Test Drive Unlimited that ran smoothly on my old X2 3800+ (on the system that's in my sig still, actually, and also had Azureus running regularly in the background.) It's choppy on my new one, and like games such as Crysis needs to be prioritized.
Click to expand...

Not sure if this is what you want but I use and love this program ever since I found it off an nlited/stripped XP http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html it has several awesome features but the one you might like is it saves priorities for programs after you set it once in the task manager as per the first picture shows. It also saves Affinity settings IIRC if that's useful for you.
 
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