Project Mercury A CPU Priority Booster

Project Mercury is a little utility i made that will sit in your systray and monitor what program/window you have active/focused right now, and boost its CPU priority.

This is for people that are heavy multitasking or dual boxing on the same PC and wants a more smooth experience. Since the game instance you are actually is controlling is getting boosted CPU priority to "above normal" it does not struggle from fighting with other instance or programs that would like to use the CPU.

It also lower CPU priority to "below normal on programs/windows you have minimized.

Active programs = Above normal
Nonactive program = normal
Minimized program = Below normal


Newest also enable you to disable coreparking on an Intel hyperthreaded CPU. Disabling Core parking can help on stuttering in games and give up to 20% boost in compression programs ( 7-zip and winrar)



Links:

Website:
http://www.techcenter.dk

Direct Downloads:
http://file.techcenter.dk/mercury.exe
http://file.techcenter.dk/mercury32.exe

Softpedia:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/CPU-Tweak/Project-Mercury.shtml

MajorGeeks:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/project_mercury.html

Any feedback/suggestions are welcome


Third Part reviews:
http://www.trishtech.com/2016/09/boost-cpu-performance-in-windows-with-project-mercury/

http://www.computerworlduk.com/download/system-desktop-tools/project-mercury-32-bit-1260-3331018/

Just bumped with some benchmark

Benchmarks (7-zip benchmark, Firefox with flash add's and h.264/aac decoding in the background)
Code:


Also the newest version has as "no multicore stutter" features which locks active program/game to only run on one core to reduce stuttering in old games.
It also has a "No HT conflicts" which eliminates performance penalties on games that runs bad on CPU's with Hyper threading

V 1.2.0.0 is released

Rewrote the code structure to no longer used a loop with timed interval. Instead its now based on a Windows hook.
This results in a dramatic reduce in it already low CPU usage as there is no more CPU resources wasted in check rinse and repeat loops. Instead Windows will send a message as soon as a new window has received focus and call Project Mercury

Overall CPU usage has dropped from 0.003-0.004% to below 0.0000000000000001% on a Core2 Quad Q6600

Since there is no delay between checks, it also means Project Mercury now react as fast as possible and no longer up to a 05sec delay in a worst case scenario.

Due to this new structure i had to remove the code for automatic CPU slice mode due to incompatibilities. I need to look into a total rewrite of the code before i can re implant this feature


http://www.TechCenter.dk/Mercury.exe

Source code open?

It is not no

oh and virustotal link
https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/ca1be994aef0b8162a7de173b00f188700b10fb6a6b9ab9583b560e1d419dc15/analysis/1455497695/
https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/ca3cd4f43174b22adc0125cc166f6185af180d538cc75b32238524630d0b51d4/analysis/1455497699/

Open source it!

Is this able to produce performance improvement for FFXI since the game uses the CPU rather than the GPU? My laptop has i5-2450M (2.5 ghz dual-core/four threads) which contains Intel HD graphics 3000 and GT630M which doesn't seem to help at all (although the Optimus app shows that POL is using the discrete GPU). I am experiencing heavy FPS drop when effects pop. It might be just poor optimization for multi-cores since it is designed to run on a single core, but I still believe this system shouldn't go below 30 that much. I thought this little app of yours could make it run better on a multi-core CPU by forcing proper prioritization, maybe?

@Asura.Slugman
Nope :D

@Bahamut.Vinedrius
It depends on your system.

if the only CPU heavy thing you are using is one session of FFXI. Then pretty much nothing will be gained by this program.

However if you are running multiple instances or if you are running some other CPU heavy stuff in the background ( video encoding, data compression)) the this program will make you experience a more smooth gameplay with higher FPS.

There is no magical overall performance boost. but instead this program makes sure that what you are playing or having active right now gets the biggest pie of the CPU cake at the cost of what you have running in the background.

So lets say you run 2x ffxi you would get roughly 50/50% of the c pu to each session.
With this utility the FFXI sessions you are actively controlling gets maybe 80% and the one in the background gets the remaining 20%.
when you switch ffxi session my program adjust accordingly and now the other session you are controlling gets its 80% of the cpu.


basically any lag you are experiencing due to heavy load on CPU gets pushed away from where you would experience it, and thereby hidden from you.


Ive done several benchmark over different machines with different background load. and its approximately recover 60% of lost FPS from having backgrounds task

e.g.
Game on its own 100fps
Game with backgrounds task going 50 fps
Game with backgrounds task and Project Mercury 80fps

Hi,

Just to say i tested this program today, I have a good PC config (I also use Drawdistance set @ max), but in some zones, sometimes, or if there is alot ppl on screen + lot of visial effect as GEO Bubbles etc... my FPS drop to 18~22 FPS, and that really not cool...

So I used this programm and instantly my FPS came back to 29+ :D

THANKS!

I use it on Windows 7 but according to this I think he work on Windows 10 and there reply to some of your questions

http://www.filedropper.com/mercury

Glaring bug in the new 1.2.0.0 Windows hook structure. Will be fixed this weekend

It seems that the windows hook react differently in windows 10 than in windows 7. so current 1.2.0.0 version does NOT work under windows 7. Priorities are not getting adjusted at all.

Since I don't have win8 I would love feedback from a user. Priority on process can be seen in task manager but you have to add in the "base priority" column

Backup download link from softpedia
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/CPU-Tweak/Project-Mercury.shtml

V 1.2.0.1 is up on http://www.techcenter.dk. Softpedia should be updated over the weekend.

- Fixed Windows 7 incompatibility with new Windows hook
- Fixed too high CPU usage when Paused.
- Slight improvement in paging (Pages out at Pause)

Some new features are in the design process

- Additional clear(execute) process waiting in idle task queue. useful to run before running a benchmark for more consistent results
- Selection of increased priority level (donation version only)
- FastReact v1. Increase windows overall feel.

I don't find Mercury in the list, maybe i look at the wrong place idk

I updated the webcache should be up now

Thanks!

V 1.2.2.0

New version is released and on my Home site. Softpedia Should update withing 24 hours


- Clear Memory now works intelligently, greatly increasing its speed

- Project Mercury's own page out routine improved to double speed

- Optimized some IF settings for minuscule reduced CPU usage

- Removed nonworking priority settings menu (was leftover from experiment)

- Implanted "Windows FastReact" features that speeds up windows

- Implanted "Save Settings" feature


Notice that "Windows FastReact" feature has a nag screen That is gone in the donator edition
If the new donations model violates any forum rules about advertisement a mod can hit me up in a PM or in this thread

Didn't get as much done as I was hoping for but got at least some small stuff done.

V1.2.3.0
- Windows FastReact settings are now saved when choosing save settings
- Implanted "No Standby on CPU load" feature
- InfoBox now has a link to http://www.Techcenter.dk


The No standby features is still very new and lacks customization. But it does prevent going to standby if CPU load is above 8% on a 10second average tested aprox. twice a min.
The CPU usage from this feature is far below WinOFF but does take around 0.014% on my Core I7 2500k @4.6GHz ( WINoff takes around 0.09%
The is 0% CPU load if the features is not enabled (default)

http://www.TechCenter.dk is Updated
Softpedia should be updated within 24h

VirusTotal check results as of today, 3 warnings.

I downloaded the exe file from http://www.techcenter.dk

False positives or what?

Do I need to adjust any settings to this utility or just run it and it takes care of everything for me?

It isn't an AV I use. It looks like you haven't checked the link. VirusTotal is a website that makes security checks on a file you upload based on many AV databases and it gives 3 warnings from 3 different databases for the latest exe file. That sure does look fishy.

Anyone know?

Sorry for the late response I haven't played FFXI for a long time.
its a false positive due to internal compression ( to make file smaller).
Many AV software is made "lazy" so instead of decompression the file and doing a real scan. it just sees the internal compression as says this is probably bad because we once saw someone use internal compression to hide a virus/malware.
Its a common issues when using compressers like UPX Aspack or Mpress sadly
I've bene in contact with several AV companies to fix it but it take alot of effort and especially kaspskey is very slow to update their scanner. ive givin up now.
But the tool is hosted on both Softpedia and MajorGeeks if you want to use a more well known place.


For the main functionality nothing needs to be adjusted. You just need to download and run it.

I've hidden some of the options further away form the user in newer versions to not "Scare" new users.
If you want Windows to react a bit faster you can go into settings and put a check mark on "Windows FastReact".

Anything else should only be used for specific situations and is not recommended for general use.
Also the "clear memory" function is not recommend for general use.