Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 Review

Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 is a commercial program for Windows designed to improve the performance of important processes running on the computer it is executed on.

Have you ever noticed choppy videos, audio or a low frame rate gaming experience under Windows even if the PC should have no issues playing media or games?

This may be caused by other tasks and processes that run at the same time as that main task. Say, you have decided to render a video that is taxing cpu and hard drive a lot.

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 needed 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 on the left, and the corresponding information in the main area of the program window. Whenever you select an item on the left, say auto-start, services or rules, information in the main pane are updated to reflect the choice.

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 which may be more comfortable than using the Windows Task Manager.

All processes that are customized in any 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 which is helpful if you want to adjust them quickly.

The Profiles feature is an advanced option which allows you to create a bundle of actions, like stopping system services or terminating processes to optimize the system for specific activities.

A gaming profile ships with the software and it is designed to terminate 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 requires all of the PC's processing power.

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 provided that they have been rated by users of the system before.

Ratings can be quite useful as they may help you get a first impression of a process that you are unfamiliar with. It is usually a good idea though to research these programs or services if you are unsure if you should disable them to run on system start.

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 and would prevent the operating system from starting up if disabled.

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.

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.

Ultimately, it comes down to how the computer is being used. If you make sure that you run only one cpu, memory or hard disk taxing process at the same time, you won't notice much of a difference but if you need to run multiple processes, then you can optimize them using the program.

It is suggested to download the trial version of the program first to see if using it improves the system's responsiveness.

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