Consequences might be winamp stuttering, or just instability because important bits of Windows aren't being run) (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. So no matter how high priority you set, you'll never be able to achieve more than a 1% speedup. Your game already takes 99% of the CPU time. But take a look in task manager when playing a game.

The priority only dictates how often the OS should try to run your process.

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.īut in 'normal' cases? Nope, no difference. But only if you're running something CPU-heavy in the background.