How To Allocate Processor Cores To A Program In Windows

Modern PCs have multiple CPU cores, and most of the time, Windows does a perfect job of choosing which CPU core should do which job. However, you can enhance performance and solve certain problems when you assign a specific CPU core to an application, known as establishing processor “affinity.”

How to set up processor affinity in Windows

To set up processor affinity in Windows, follow these steps:

1. Open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc. Click the Details tab to see a list of running processes.

2. Right-click the process for which you want to set processor affinity and select Set affinity from the context menu.

3. In the pop-up window that appears, select the checkbox next to the processor you want the process to run on.

4. Click OK to save the changes and close the window.

How to set process priority in Windows

Additionally, if you want to set process priority in Windows to force the system to assign CPU resources to a specific process over other processes, follow these instructions:

1. Open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc and click the Details tab to see a list of running processes. Right-click the process whose priority you want to set and select Set Priority from the context menu.

Select the desired priority from the drop-down menu and click OK to save your changes.

The available priority levels are:

• Realtime: The process will have the highest priority and take up the most CPU time.
• High: The process will be given high priority and allocated a significant amount of CPU time.
• Above normal: The process will be given higher priority than normal and allocated more CPU time than normal processes.
• Normal: The process will be prioritized and allocated standard CPU time.
• Below normal: The process will be given lower priority than normal and allocated less CPU time than normal processes.
• Low: The process will be given low priority and allocated minimal CPU time.

Overall, manually assigning processors can be a useful tool for optimizing your system's performance. However, it is important to use it carefully and understand the potential risks.