Have you ever noticed choppy videos, audio or a low frame rate gaming experience under Windows? This could have been caused by other tasks and processes that ran at the same time as that main task. Say, you have decided to render a video that is taxing cpu and hard drive to the maximum. And while it would be to boring to simply stare at the rendering screen for the time it takes, you decided to play a Flash game, online game or watch a video on the computer. In a situation like this, you might experience performance issues.
The basic idea behind Ashampoo’s Core Tuner 2 is to give Windows users the tools at hand to distribute the computing power in an optimal fashion.
Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 Review
Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 uses a clean interface. It displays all program modules in the left sidebar, and the corresponding information in the main area of the program window.
When you start the program, you see a list of all processes that are currently running on your system. Each process is listed with its name and description, the cpu and memory usage, the process priority and use of cpu cores.
One of the main features of the program is to change process priorities and cpu core use. The menu icons at the top of the window or the right-click context menu display the options to change those settings. It is furthermore possible to terminate a process right from that window.
All processes that are customized this way are listed under Rules. One interesting option is the ability to import and export rules, handy if you run Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 on multiple computer systems. Rules can be modified right in the rules menu as well.
The Profiles feature is an advanced feature. Profiles basically bundle multiple actions, like stopping system services or terminating processes. A gaming profile ships with the software, which terminates web browser windows, program update tools and several system services to improve gaming performance on the system.
Profiles can then be run with a right-click on the system tray icon and the selection of the profile in the context menu. It is possible to add additional profiles, for instance for video rendering, photo editing or any other task on the PC that taxes the system.
Sometimes though you can make changes to the system that are permanent in nature. For instance by removing programs from autostart or services that are not really needed for operating the computer.
That’s why Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 comes with an auto-start and Services module. The auto-start module lists all programs that are started automatically with the system.
One interesting feature is the rating system that displays user ratings of startup programs.
The Services module makes use of ratings as well. Some services are blocked from being disabled which makes sense as they are required to run Windows at all.
Installation
Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 installation should not be problematic at all. Users should however pay attention to the installation dialog as the default installation tries to install a toolbar and make changes to the homepage and search provider of the web browser.
A ten-day trial version is provided at the Ashampoo website.
Verdict
Windows users who are experiencing lags and performance drops when they run multiple tasks on their system at the same time will benefit the most from Ashampoo Core Tuner 2, provided that they configure the process priorities, profiles and rules accordingly.
Users with high performance systems on the other hand may not see a difference at all, or only a slight difference that may not make a huge difference.
Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 Giveaway
Ashampoo were nice enough to give us 24 Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 licenses to give away. To enter the drawing for a license, tell me why you’d like the program.
I will draw the winners randomly from all users who have commented here. Winners will be announced in a week’s time here in this review.
Update: The winners are: Efthimios, MerleOne, Paul(us), Mike, Jordan Humberto de Souza, Midnight, kn0w, e1scd, SubgeniusD, Lee, jSwann0, Andrei, Michael Brazil, Jake, vhick, Mongoplus, Stefan Julian, G Rajesh, JAIME, VladM, RAGAGH, zoras, StingRay, alro
Related Articles:
Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 Review And Giveaway [Ghacks Christmas Giveaway]Tweak The Windows Alt-Tab Preview With Alt-Tab Tuner
Ashampoo Burning Studio Free
Blurry Fonts In Firefox? Try Anti-Aliasing Tuner
Ashampoo Hacked, Watch Out For Fake Customer Emails
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ using the icons below.
Usually, this kind of software didn’t help to increase the speed of your PC. But the good thing is it help you to optimize and become stable, specially if you do a multi-tasking. Its help you to manage process’ resources and priorities.
Thanks for the giveaway!
I am now running on an older computer (My main on died.), so I can use something to stablize my heavy load on this computer.
Please put my name in for this drawing.
Thank you for bringing this offer to us and thank you to Ashampoo for providing the free licenses.
This is exactly the kind of utility I desperately need.
thanks
Please count me in. Need such a program to boost up my laptop for CPU intensive stuff.
Thanks.
i need one..for my laptop.unfortunately only have under 1mb memory…so it’s importany reorganize aplication service and mostly for using adobe and corel draw
Let me in…thanks :)
Looks nice to manage process and priorities.
Count me in.
Thanks!
count me in
good program for tweaking win7
It looks pretty good to tweak multi-core systems. Count me in for this.
I would love to win a copy of ciore tuner. I am running a dual core system right now but should be moving up to a Quad Core Shortly, Thank you for the chance to win.
Count me in please.
I love its details view in process tab, where we can set up priority for the process to particular core or can terminate the process, resources tab is also a good one.
Thanks for giveaway GHACKS.NET
count me in.love to have this.thanks
This would be a very nice tool to speed up my system.
When you need get all the power of your CPU ;It’s very important to balance the load into the cores , so this is a good choose for everybody that know how to do it.
is it something like the ccleaner?
No, it is not a file cleaner. It optimizes process usage and cpu cores.
I use the computer program 400 … but most are not optimized for the use of multi-core processors … and I have licenses for all software from Ashampoo in addition to this, but this just requires a very … I can not put the computer on nothing but Windows XP … so that will nourish the hope to obtain a license for this program and…
You do not know how glad I am If you see this GIVEAWAY!!!
THANK YOU!
I´d love to give some life to this old CPU ! Thanks for counting me in!
Hi Martin,
I would like to be able to win a free copy, so that I can create an optimized profile(s) for various tasks.
Thanks.
Ashampoo products known for its user friendly interface, Core tuner 2 is one of that having the details and simplest user interface.
I love its Profile creation option, provide facility to create profile with different service to start and stop, it include gaming profile which is quite useful to stop window services not required while gaming.
count me in.
i’ve turbo boost core i7 but i’d like to always run heavy programs like my photoshop in a separate dedicate core.
Thanks a lot !
Just received my license for Core Tuner. Thanks, Ghacks!
Now, let’s light up this puppy and see what it can do.
Thanks Martin – YTMND – http://yourethemannowdog.com/
Is that the silliest thing you’ve ever seen or what?
Out of curiosity I “borrowed” a cracked copy of this pgm off Demonoid but haven’t activated it yet. So thanks for helping keep pirates honest!!