Computers today are equipped with very powerful hardware, especially when compared to the PCs of a few years ago. The problem, however, is that even programs have evolved and, even if they improve and become more powerful, some of them as well as web browsers, require more and more performance, thus canceling the performance advantage.
If you were using a new computer with the programs of 5 years ago, it would go very fast.
For this reason, tools that optimize computer resources to concentrate them on the most used programs are always in fashion, so as not to waste memory and processor power .
One technique used on Windows to speed up the execution of programs and obtain maximum performance from the computer is that of defining the priorities that I had already talked about in the past.
Giving high priority to an active process in Windows means assigning it greater importance and signaling the system to dedicate more resources to it, especially if there are other applications open.
Whenever a process or program is run and opened, it is automatically assigned a priority.
The system itself tries to balance resources according to needs, thus dedicating greater CPU power to high priority programs.
To achieve greater optimization of the definition of priorities, it is possible to manually modify this assignment in order to speed up the most used programs or the most important processes (if it is a program or operations that are performed in the background)
With Windows you can change the priority of the processes through the Task Manager or " Task Manager " (press the right mouse button on the taskbar), by right clicking on one of the values.
The changes in priorities, however, disappear when that process ends (if you close the program or if you turn off the PC).
So if the computer is used to work on a particular program or even to play, rules can be created to raise or lower the allocation of resources for specific processes and programs .
There are several Windows tools that can be used to configure these rules.
1) Process Lasso, described and explained in the article "No more slowdowns of Windows and CPU at 100%" is an exceptional program, unfortunately, no longer free.
2) TopWinPrio described in the article "Raising the priority of processes to increase CPU performance" is a simple tool to automate priorities so that resources are allocated for the user program which will therefore respond faster.
3) Process Tamer is a completely free tool that allows you to raise or lower the priorities of the processes by configuring automatic actions according to the CPU consumption.
After installation, it operates in the background and you can open the configuration menu by pressing the icon in the taskbar at the bottom right.
The program works automatically and serves to balance CPU usage by avoiding those overloads (100% CPU) that block the computer.
CPU thresholds can also be set for individual applications by creating custom rules.
For example, if you use your computer to surf the internet with Google Chrome, you can specify the chrome.exe process in the Real Time tab so as to give the browser greater importance in the use of resources.
The configuration window is minimized with the Minimize button on the Operation tab because, if you press the X at the top right, the Process Prioritizer is terminated.
4) Finally, a last alternative is a very small tool that installs additional items on the task manager and does not require you to stay running on Windows.
Prio is used to permanently save the changed priority for a process, which Windows does not allow by default.
After installation, a computer restart is required and then, to save and change priorities, you must open the task manager and right-click on the different processes.
When you hover the mouse pointer over a process, it is described in detail.
Prio extends the context menu of the Task Manager with options to set and / or save the priorities assigned manually .
Unlike the others, with this tool you don't get that automatic automation but you can manually speed up the most used programs.
5) More or less with the same principle as the tools above, the Game Booster tool also operates to optimize the PC for playing video games .
6) Programs to analyze memory and CPU usage and terminate processes
All the programs in the list work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 for 32-bit and 64-bit editions.
In conclusion, after doing some tests, we can say that processes that do not have a graphic part (a window) have greater benefit from the definition of the high priority.
Programs like Chrome sometimes seem to be faster while other times there don't seem to be any particular differences.
With these tools you can experiment without problems and you can also change the priority of system processes, if you use Windows as an administrator, but only if you are 1000% sure of what you want to do.
