Setting a game to High priority in Task Manager
Also searched as: high priority · realtime priority · task manager priority · process priority · priority hack
What it does
Raising a game's CPU priority to High — or Realtime — in Task Manager so Windows favors it over everything else.
The honest verdict
Graded placebo. Priority only decides who wins when threads are FIGHTING for a core, and on a healthy rig running one game, nothing is fighting — Windows already favors the window you're playing in, so High changes nothing you can measure. Realtime is worse than nothing: it lets the game starve the system threads that feed it, which surfaces as crackling audio and stutters you didn't have before. …
Compy won't recommend it. If you're curious anyway: change one thing at a time, measure it on your own rig, and revert unless it's clearly better — that loop is exactly what Compy is built around.
The full graded entry
The rest of this write-up — the specifics behind the grade — ships inside the app. The Blackbook publishes its verdicts here — the full write-ups stay in the book, on your rig, next to your own measurements.
The Compy Blackbook holds 191 graded entries like this one, judged against your hardware — and every change it does make is reversible, with the receipt to prove it.
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