Some users are claiming Discord's default process priorities are causing performance problems in esports games, so I've tested it myself to see what's going on

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And I have to say, I can't see any serious issues at all.

The Discord mascot sitting on a floating Discord text entry bar.
(Image credit: Discord)

If you're serious about your competitive shooters, you'll know that every single frame per second counts, so anything that gets in the way of that is something to be avoided. But what if the software you're using to chat with teammates is actually making things worse? According to some folks, that's precisely what Discord is doing, and it's because of process priorities.

First, let me just say that this doesn't seem to be a particularly widely reported issue, but we have noticed various claims cropping up on social media that Discord's default process priorities are too high. This, in turn, takes up too much of your CPU's time, resulting in lower frame rates, spikes in frame times, and whatnot.

AQ 'process priority' is a value given to programs that lets the operating system know how much of the CPU's time and resources should be dedicated to the task, compared to all the other processes it's juggling. A default value of 'Normal' means that it doesn't get priority over anything else, and the OS can just do what it needs to do to manage everything.

In Windows, process priority can be set higher than this: Above Normal, High and Realtime force the system to push a program ahead of everything else. In the case of the Windows Discord app, it actually has eight processes running when it's active, and although five of them have Normal priorities, one defaults to Above Normal, and two labelled as 'DiscordSystemHelper' run with High priorities.

Given that this is what some folks are complaining about, I decided to check it all out for myself, running Counter-Strike 2 at 1080p, with Low graphics, FSR Performance upscaling, and Nvidia Reflex enabled on a Ryzen 9 9900X rig with an RTX 5090.

Other than the fact that I truly suck at CS2 (I mean, seriously bad), there's pretty much nothing untoward that I saw in my testing. The above video clip compares three bot matches: Without Discord running, with Discord open in the background but with default priorities, and then one more where I forced every Discord process priority to Normal.

If you look closely at the frame time graph underneath the D3D11 performance figures (average fps and 1% low fps), you'll see that they run pretty much identically. The frame times are fractionally higher when Discord is running, but we're talking a millisecond here, a millisecond there.

That might matter in a professional esports competition, but the rigs every combatant will be using will be the same (or should be the same), so nobody would be at a loss. If it's just yourself playing with friends, albeit competitively so, then it's still not really enough of a performance impact to warrant concern.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

However, this is just one test, on one PC, in one game. In other words, it's nowhere near enough evidence to comprehensively state that Discord's default priorities are a problem. But if you are worried about it all, then it's easy enough to resolve.

Just get Discord going, then fire up Task Manager (right-click on the Taskbar or Start Menu button). Then head to the Details page, scroll to the relevant process, and right-click on that. Scoot down to Set Priority, choose Normal, and then confirm the selection.

You might find that on your PC, it gives your games a little more CPU breathing space, but if I'm to be honest, Discord is pretty light in terms of processor demand, and if that app's giving your PC grief, then games are never going to be running super smoothly anyway.

Oh, and don't be tempted to try and force more performance by setting a game's priority to High or, heaven help you, Realtime. It's unlikely to make a blind bit of difference, and in the case of Realtime mode, it'll just make things very unstable. So don't do it, alright?

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Nick Evanson
Nick Evanson
Hardware Writer

Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in the early 1980s. After leaving university, he became a physics and IT teacher and started writing about tech in the late 1990s. That resulted in him working with MadOnion to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its PC gaming section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com covering everything and anything to do with tech and PCs. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open-world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?

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