Not Speed - Priority
Those settings are not anything that varies the speed at which the client works, they set how much priority the client has. At the low setting the client gets any cycles not needed to run some other operation on the computer, and as soon as you try to do something else with the machine the client releases whatever cycles are required for that operation. At nomal the client is in a negotiation situation with everything else you are running for as many cycles as possible. At high the client's needs are met ahead of any normal demands for cycles. You end up with this type of breakdown:
LOW:
Client gets all free cycles - no noticable slowdown when running other programs
NORMAL:
Client gets an even share of available cycles - potential noticable slowdown of all operations depending on how much stuff you're trying to do at the same time
HIGH:
Client's needs are met first and since the client will attempt to demand all available everything else suffers. I tried running a client on HIGH once and had a devil of a time even getting the machine to respond to a shutdown command.
LOW is the best choice for anything other than a dedicated cruncher that is never going to be doing anything else.
SkyHook
