[CaptainHaplo]

Think of a Pie.......

Yummy Pie.....

The entire Pie is how much your processor (regardless of # of cores) can process every cycle. Every process that is running is a slice of pie that is not available for your game. Sure, some processes are tiny in comparison to the total amount, but you don't have to be "CPU Locked" to get better performance. Just remember - a larger slice of Pie is good for games.

The other thing to realize is some processes themselves may be tiny, but they may depend on other parts of your PC to execute. A perfect example is the Gawdawful "searchindexer" process that somehow continues to still exist in Win7. The slowest component on your PC in most cases is the HD, and this process requires continual access to the HD as data changes. Thus, its "piece" of pie is small, but given the response time of the HD, the actual drag on the system is higher than just the "process" itself indicates.

This is why killing non-vital processes does more than solve "CPU Lock" issues and can speed your gaming performance well outside what the process would make you think.