One of my processes ("System") is taking up a good portion of my cpu?

Question

I know System is normal but it seems to always been eating up around 40% of my CPU when im running games slowing down gameplay. Is this a common problem and how can i fix it?

Answer 1

It's possible to "tweak" a process through task manager. Open task manager (right click empty portion of task bar or Ctrl+Alt+Del), then click on processes tab. Locate the specific process for the game you're playing and right click on it. You can Set Priority to High or AboveNormal and see if this helps speed up your game play. Likewise, you can try decreasing "system" to Low or BelowNormal. All you're doing is telling the CPU to spend more or less time on a particular process. This is not a guaranteed cure to speed up game play. The game itself may require a faster CPU than what's in your computer for optimum performance. (Kinda like Microsoft saying XP will run with 64MB RAM but real world apps show it needs 256MB as the absolute minimum.)

plrr

Answer 2

If its only happening when you are running games, it could mean that particular system process is required for the games to run, such as DirectX for example. Hence its CPU requirement.