hi everyone.

does anyone know how to get round a performance loss on my my racing game while also listening to my iTunes library?

perhaps to give the game 90% of the computer power, and iTunes 10%? (or something)

i've tried minimising iTunes to system tray, and even tried putting the iTunes onto my 10 gb harddrive and the game on my 70 gb harddrive (not sure if i did that correctly though, i stopped short of uninstalling itunes for fear of losing my music) and neither worked.

any sneaky techniques you guys use?

Dont use itunes to listen to music. Get winamp or a lighter software program and listen to your songs through that.

you're saying iTunes is too memory intensive compared to other music players?

how much difference will i be looking at?

Correct. Itunes uses about 256 mb of ram. Win amp only uses about 64 mbs. Also, what other programs are you running? Are you running any virus/firewall programs such as Norton? How much ram do you have
?

We have seen a lot of problems here on TechSpot from people using iTunes.
Getting rid of it as twite suggests is your best idea.

right.
i just right-clicked "my computer" > general

and it says 1gb ram which means itunes is using over 25%?
(also 666 mhz, which aint good too)

hmmm, could also turn norton off while i'm playing too i suppose.

what about downloading an EARLY version of winamp to make it even smoother?
so whad'ya reckon?

Ok..we found your problem. Get rid of norton, and turn off itunes. Norton is trash and takes up 256 mb. MINIMUM at any given time. Itunes takes up 256 mb. Windows xp takes up 128-256 mbs. And all the other little apps take up around 256 MB. That leaves you with NO memory to utilize when playing games.

thanks alot.
i have just disabled norton, but its still in the system tray. (with an 'x')
i'm not sure if that means its REALLY off or not.
i'll grab winamp, and be back soon.

come back please!

Before you attempt to either disable or remove Norton you should really follow these instructions.

Download either the free AVG or Avast antivirus programmes and either the free Zonealarm or Kerio firewall programmes from within this link - [url]http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic58138.html[/url]

Then, disconnect from the net and completely uninstall Symantec/Norton. If you have any problems in uninstalling the programme, take a look at this thread - [url]http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic57112.html[/url]

Once you`ve completely uninstalled Symantec/Norton, reboot your system and install whichever firewall programme you chose, followed by whichever antivirus programme you chose. Reboot your system the required number of times and reconnect to the net. Run the antivirus updates.

iTunes shouldn't be using 256 Megs of RAM, shouldn't even be close. But I still wouldn't recommend gaming with it on, especially if you have that slow of a processor.

You could right click on iTunes in task manager and set its Priority to Below Normal and that may help some.

For Winamp, I would not recommend installing it with the new interface, I'd install it with the 2.x or old style or whatever its called, but thats personal preference and won't increase gaming performance much if any.

Minimum requirements for Itunes is 256 Mbs. Your right, it probably won't take up all 256 Mbs, but it will be close. Also, i said that before i knew he had norton, his main problem.

okay thanks.

rik: i will replace norton with those 2 programmes tomorrow then. they're just as good, right?

SNGX725: couldn't find that function under task manager, if you could tell me how you found the "below normal" priority i will check it out.

nice one you lot. bed time now.

Nope, they are infinately better than that Norton crap!!

at no point should you have to not use itunes, memory intensive or not. Its the norton that will slow you down the most. try that first.

Its the 2nd tab, I don't have a Windows box powered up right now (power outages left and right because of ice storm) but its the 2nd tab in task manager I believe. The one that lists every process running on your computer and what percentage of the CPU they are using. If you right click on a particular program you can set the priority, provided you have administrative rights.

As everyone else has suggested, get rid of Norton and load some other AV such as Avast or AVG.
And if u really want to listen to songs while gaming, I wud recommend that u use Winamp instead of iTunes. Also, switch to the classic Winamp skin to further reduce RAM usage.

Setting the priority to 'Below Normal' will cause the songs to skip and stutter and the sound output will be of a poor quality...

okay i've replaced norton with AVG and zonealarm.
also yeah, i was gonna say what klaw24 just said, the songs jump too much in low priority.

searching for an early winamp now

Perhaps, but perhaps not, he'll have to try. And it will do nothing to the playback sound quality itself, you aren't changing the actual file in any way. If it skips it skips, but it doesn't skip AND reduce quality. He can also set the game to above normal. He'll just have to play with things.

okay i've decided to go with a combination of winamp/AVG/zonealarm.
it works much better. thanks everyone, you're very knowledgable.

two things though:
A) the more mp3's i add to winamp, does it get "heavier"?
or is it just the player itself?
B) is there any way to 'lock' high priority/ low priority, because it keeps defaulting when i reload the programme again

I meant to say that the output might contain crackles, that's all...