Tell me more ×  I have heard a myth that a job will finish
faster if it is kept as the active window, and not in the
background or minimized.  Is there any truth to this? Does the
CPU put precedence to tasks where this happens?   share|improve
this question add comment  4 Answers  up vote 7 down vote
accepted  On Windows the foreground application gets a priority
boost. This is to help it maintain responsiveness to the user
and makes sure that when it's ready to run after waiting for
some I/O event, it'll get to run next, ahead of most other
applications that might be waiting to run.  There is also a
potential for a longer quantum for foreground applications.  I
don't know how much faster an application would complete if it's
run in the foreground instead of the background - there are so
many factors that would go into this (particularly I/O). The
intent is to make the application more responsive.  This is all
configurable to some extent (maybe only on server SKUs):
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