CPU Smoothing? (Solved)

[desiree101]

What exactly does the CPU Usage Measurement Smoothing do? I haven't touched it since I installed it as I'm afraid I might mess something up  lol
I have set a couple of games to 'Force High' and they're working great, so will the 'smoothing' affect those?
I have read the info in the Help section, but I just don't understand it. Is it better to set the gauge to 'Might Jump the Gun' or 'Might React Too Slowly'? What exactly happens to programs at each end? Can someone explain this in very simple terms lol? I guess if I don't even understand this maybe I shouldn't be using the program at all, but I can't do without it now as I notice such a big difference with my games already - in a good way

[mouser]

Welcome desiree!

Let me try to explain the concept of the cpu usage measurement smoothing.

First of all, understand that the setting does not change your cpu -- it refers to how the program MEASURES how busy your cpu is when it decides whether it should tame a program.

If the setting is at the far extreme towards "Might Jump the Gun" it means that the program is always looking at the current, instantaneous cpu use of the program -- so as soon as the program uses a lot of cpu for even a fraction of a section, Process Tamer will view the program as something to be tames.

As the slider moves more towards the "Might React Too Slowly" end, Process Tamer will AVERAGE the cpu use of an application over a longer and longer period, and only pay attention to the recent average.  So if you set it at the far end of that scale, a program could hog the cpu for 10 minutes before Process Tamer decides the application needs to be tamed.

So the default setting is reasonable, and you could move it a bit towards "might react too slowly" if you have applications that are being tamed when they really are just using high cpu for a short period that you don't care about.  Or move it towards "might jump the gun" if you find that process tamer is waiting longer than it should before kicking in and taming an app.

Bottom line: It's not a setting you are likely to benefit from much by changing it away from default.

[desiree101]

Thank you so much for your quick reply 
I think I understand it now.
As I already notice the difference PT makes to my games, its obviously doing what it's made to do so I'm happy.
You say 'so as soon as the program uses a lot of cpu for even a fraction of a section, Process Tamer will view the program as something to be tames'.
Regarding the CPU priority, the game is set to 'Force High'. PT won't tame it as the priority overrides it, correct? I have set the explicit rule to it.

[mouser]

Correct.

[desiree101]

Excellent!
Thanks again for your help

[TaoPhoenix]

Can you give a couple of links just as a reminder more broadly what process tamer does and how it can affect applications? I'm wondering if you tame one (badly written?) process, it might free up partial cpu usage to make the rest of your computing experience bearable.

I think the two that come to mind for me are MsMEng or whatever, tied to Ms Sec Essentials, when it does whatever it does, especially at reboot when it wants to check everything. I'd like to slow that down.

The other is some combo of Flash and Plugin Container when I watch videos. I'm curious what taming will do to that, and if in fact there might be a point there is no loss of video quality (adware fighting adblock in the background?), and then again the overall computing might be bearable. "Your choice of a third case".

On topic for this thread - I'm not sure the exact setting but I'd put it maybe medium aggressive because it's always the same X things that really crush the cpu, so anything more than the 2 second spikes that web page scrolling does, should be picked up.

[mouser]

Process Tamer web page is here: https://www.donation...proctamer/index.html

The program isn't a magic cure-all, and won't make your old pc suddenly into some super fast modern gaming workstation.

It's a small utility that can be useful in some situations, where you have a process that for some reason is dominating your cpu:

There are times when a process will hog your cpu, such as when converting audio/video files, or working with compressed archives. Because these processes completely consume the cpu, your system becomes sluggish to respond and using the computer for other tasks becomes impossible while these processes are running.  Process Tamer solves this problem by identifying such these degenerate conditions and temporarily reducing the priority of the offending processes in order to allow your system to respond to other requests.

The other way that Process Tamer can be useful is in IDENTIFYING the processes that may hog your cpu and make it unresponsive -- if such behaviors are happening unexpectedly.

On a modern multicore cpu, a program like Process Tamer is less useful than on an older cpu, because the presence of multiple cores means that even if one process is completely hogging a core, your operating system may remain fully responsive by using the other cores.

[TaoPhoenix]

I've got it and I'm trying it out. I'll have to observe it over time and see if I can report some results.

Edit:

I stuck both Pale Moon and Plugin Container on Force Below Normal Priority, and the other big offender, MsMpEng from MS Sec Essentials. So I'll let them sit there and see what results.