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I asked a question, How to most efficiently utilize CPU resources in windows 7?, that was closed as too localized.

It is not clear to me why this is too localized. I did mention specific programs that I would like to improve the performance of, but these were only provided as examples, and they are fairly common.

  1. What makes this question too localized?
  2. How could I improve the question?
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    Probably because its an urban legend that some certain tweaks will gain you massive performance boosts. If there were, you can be pretty sure they would already be in use.
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 14:35
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    @IvoFlipse: Not really. Use cases differ so performance settings are often generalized, hence you can tweak out some performance. Of course not massive though... :)
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 14:47
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    I would wonder in situations like this, the mess that the Question makes in their own question, is their own problem :-) Resulting discussion still DOES give the user clues, and possiblities for testing how each thing does react to different ideas. Testing various things presented will reveal the reality behind them. I understand why it was closed, but the closures themselves and the lack of the Discuss possibility causes some of the friction itself. "Your results will vary", is not a big enough reasons, to send a user somewhere else (where discussion is allowed) to get the ideas.
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 21:07
  • All the buttons, and stuff running, and possible changes to time slices and priority of tasks plus the multiple cores to work with and the various I/O from disk even (yes some programs even allow I/O to be switched up or down). The original intent of the use of ram, and user variable changes to the use of ram. The winders system is very malable. Daily I apply at will, or at a whim some adjustments to suit my needs at the moment. Sometimes the effect is seconds (or less), sometimes minutes of change. we can open 4 more "cans of worms" and "Your results will still vary"
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 21:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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As one of the five close voters I've chosen Too Localized because of this part of the close reason:

... an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience ...

Tweaking the priority settings on processes is something that works or breaks depending on your usage scenario, you have left out what your usage scenario is (for privacy reasons) but if you would have given it it would be different from many others.

If you would have accepted one answer over the other, it would have not applied to the general audience. Simply because different programs can result in a different scheduling of your processes. When you defer from the general standards, you get something that only works for your use case rather than something that applies to the general audience. As Ivo Flipse outlines in his first comment to your question, there are no urban legends that would apply to anyone; simply because they would have already been applied after these many years...

Furthermore, as this is a question where both ends are pulling; I would otherwise have chosen to vote your question as not constructive, for similar reasoning as provided above. There is no definitive answer.

I see no way to improve your question. It boils down to doing some homework / research on how to improve the performance of these programs in your use cases. Do performance comparisons before and after applying your tweaks to see what works and what doesn't. Also check out whether you can get around running things from RAM instead of your HDD where possible; similarly, database programs allow you to configure caching which also helps improve performance.

The bottom line here is: There is no single magic fix that works for every program on every PC.

eg. I do not run a virus scanner, while a relative of me needs a virus scanner and a firewall to be safe...

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  • I am still confused - the ability to improve the performance of program X in Windows 7 would be of interest to a wide audience, even if the answer boils down to "you can't / there is no general solution".
    – Abe
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 15:20
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    I realise that my question could be boiled down to "can I get windows to use more than one core when transcribing an mp3 with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10.1 while I am not otherwise using the computer", but I thought that this could be too localized, and that any answers would not be limited to a specific program. Would such a question have been better? Now knowing that the process was running at max capacity (100% of one core), I realize that the answer is "no", but just because the answer is 'no' should not disqualify the question.
    – Abe
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 15:25
  • btw thanks for the response (+1)
    – Abe
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 15:25
  • @Abe: Your question looked written with software as an afterthought, which is why no specific suggestions for Dragon were given. At least by the looks of it, we can't tell the intent of the answers but they seem quite general in their comments. Indeed, a single software product could be too localized, because you could ask the same question for any conversion software that exists which is quite a long list. Perhaps it could be generalized though, but then you limit the specific possible improvements. As for the other part, developers have to make the application aware of multiple cores.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 15:31

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