• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Increasing CPU process priority

ChAoTiCpInOy

Diamond Member
I have an iMac G5 running Mac OS X 10.4.8. Basically, I want to increase the priority of an application, i.e. iDVD. I have looked online for help, but to no avail. I am thinking that Mac OS X prioritizes processes itself. Is this mentality right? If not, how do I change the priority?
 
It adjusts the priorities of processes dynamically yes, but it is still possible to change the base priority yourself. But why do you want to? You know it won't make it go any faster, right?
 
Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Why wouldn't it make it go any faster?

Unless your running something else which is taking cycles, there aren't any sitting in reserve to give to you in you raise the priority. Now if your trying to give it more cycles than say some other encoding your running at the same time, you can. But if you think raising the priority means the app is faster if there isn't other people using the cpu too, it is not.
 
By you raising the priority, does that not mean that the CPU will give more of its cycles and give less to some other process? I do not understand what you are trying to say. Is this any different then how Windows machines work when you change the priority of the process?
 
Yes it will mean that it'll get more time slices than other processes, but chances are that it won't help much unless you're doing something else pretty CPU intensive.

Anyway the commands you want are nice and renice, depending on whether you want to set the priority when you first start the process or if you want to change a running process's priority.
 
Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
By you raising the priority, does that not mean that the CPU will give more of its cycles and give less to some other process? I do not understand what you are trying to say. Is this any different then how Windows machines work when you change the priority of the process?

What he's saying is that your computer probably has most of the cpu time free anyway. Your probably getting close to 100% because nothing else is using it. Raising priority will help if you're running a bunch of things at once, or are using a couple of cpu intensive apps at the same time.
 
Back
Top