[ADDAvenger]

Do you disable F@H, or Exit it?  If you only disable it, try exiting it and then re-launching after the game is done... (I have F@H).

I run two console clients as services, and shut them down through services.msc whenever I need to do something potentially intensive.  FWIW, I sometimes forget to turn it off, and sometimes it's a lot worse and sometimes it lags no more than it would with the clients off.

[jr2]

Ya, because F@H is "lowest" priority - it's supposed to take a backseat, and usually does.  IDK what your problem is then.. what services are taking all the CPU time?

[ADDAvenger]

Well I don't know for 100% scientific certainty (since I don't know how to monitor individual process utilization while gaming), but the CPU peaks when I'm running the game, and flatlines when I hit the windows key to look at Task Manager, so it seems it can only be the Freespace process (fs2_open_3_6_9.exe)

[jr2]

Hmph...

I have GMA 950, which is crap, but like I said it ordinarily handles the game just fine, I also have 2GB of memory and a T2300, I've set the game process affinity to CPU 0, and that core is always loaded 100% when playing.  I know GMA 950 offloads some things to the CPU,

Set the process affinity to CPU 1... I have a hunch that your GMA 950 offloads to CPU 0, causing the lag as both FSO and your GMA are using the same core... can't hurt to try.. this would also explain the CPU usage dropping to nothing when you minimize FSO, because it's no longer asking for anything to be rendered.

[ADDAvenger]

It seems you're right, looking at task manager, core 0 was mostly flatline, but there were small spikes here and there, while core 1 was almost always at 100% as expected.  I think that fixed it as much as it can be fixed on my machine, I still have occasional lag, but now it's only when a bunch of stuff blows up all at once. 

I do have to set the affinity every time I launch the game, could you all put some little piece of code into 3.6.10 that sets the affinity automatically for those of us with dual core and integrated graphics?

[jr2]

Win2000 Launcher is an application booster for Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Whistler). By default, Windows 2000 launch your game at a priority level 3 (there are 6 levels). With the launcher you can configure your programs to use the priority level of your choice and choose on which CPU your program should run on (if you have multiple processors in your system).

[ADDAvenger]

Win2000 Launcher is an application booster for Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Whistler). By default, Windows 2000 launch your game at a priority level 3 (there are 6 levels). With the launcher you can configure your programs to use the priority level of your choice and choose on which CPU your program should run on (if you have multiple processors in your system).

Well.. that's nice, but this is a temporary fix at best, since neither multi core processors nor shoddy IGPs are going away any time soon.  Yeah I know they get better, I'd probably have 0 problems if I had the x3100 IGP, but sooner than later the game will be made better and more intensive, and it'll be the same old thing all over again.

I know you all are behind on 3.6.10, and it may not be put in, but I know you all keep some kind of wishlist somewhere, just stick this in there for me.

[ARSPR]

Win2000 Launcher is an application booster for Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Whistler). By default, Windows 2000 launch your game at a priority level 3 (there are 6 levels). With the launcher you can configure your programs to use the priority level of your choice and choose on which CPU your program should run on (if you have multiple processors in your system).

Well.. that's nice, but this is a temporary fix at best, since neither multi core processors nor shoddy IGPs are going away any time soon.  Yeah I know they get better, I'd probably have 0 problems if I had the x3100 IGP, but sooner than later the game will be made better and more intensive, and it'll be the same old thing all over again.

I know you all are behind on 3.6.10, and it may not be put in, but I know you all keep some kind of wishlist somewhere, just stick this in there for me.

Look in google for imagecfg.exe util. This utility modifies your exe so it automatically uses one or other core. (IIRC it's an old official Win NT utility). So you only need to "modify" your fsopen.exe with this util.