I have a game that suffers from very poor load times (although it runs smoothly) unless it's set to realtime priority. In that case, loading is instantaneous.

Now the question is, is it safe? Windows has a warning message like "bla bla not recommended system stability bla bla," but is there any stock in the warning? The worst that can happen is just that other processes will slow down, right?

Just don't mess with it.
If you must, set the priority before you run the program.

>Just don't mess with it.

Why not?

How much RAM are you running?

You shouldn't have to fiddle with system priorities if you have enough resources.

What game is it, and do you know the software version? You should always check for patches/updates that sometimes help reduce load/lag.

It's Guilty Gear XX #Reload. Dunno about software version, it doesn't have a version number or anything. Yeah, I should have enough RAM. 512 megs, when the recommended is 128 and it runs on like 30, tops.

I've never had this problem before, but specifically, the problem is that it takes 20-30 seconds to load audio data at the start of a match. It's not the actual loading I guess, it's the decompression. But on realtime, it doesn't take any time at all.

The game itself doesn't lag or anything. It runs smoothly. It's only when it has to load audio that there's a problem, and I end up having to stare at a blank screen for like twenty seconds while it loads the data into memory.

Is this "realtime priority" the same as "PCI latency"?
I remember using an utility in Windows9x to modify the PCI latency of my video card because my audio card was lagging when playing movies.
Some video manufacturers were hogging the latency to make them "look good" in consumer tests.

Do you have enough free disk space for virtual memory/swap file use? Another thing that comes to mind is a disk defrag, but these are kind of shots in the dark.

512MB RAM doesn't cut it any more nowadays, at least if you're running XP. Get another 512MB and you'll have much more fun working/playing with your computer. Maybe it won't help with your loading issue (if it's a swapping issue, it will) but overall your system will be much more usable.

>>1
"Realtime priority" mostly means that an app will get very much ressources (CPU time, mostly). This can make the system slightly unresponsive, since said ressources will go to the realtime prio app first and to other things only when not needed or really neccesary.

Generally, setting the game to "Realtime priority" should not be terribly bad, but if it's neccesary, you might want to stop whatever other things are running in the background, then that should not be neccesary anymore.

There's probably something rotten in your system.
Open the Task Manager and check which other process hogs CPU while the game is loading.