I've looked around the forums but haven't seen an answer to this.

I'm assuming that the BOINC processes run at a lower processor priority so that they have minimal interference with other running tasks (like when I'm trying to do work myself!). I'm running a Mac version of BOINCManager.

Can anyone confirm this?

Thanks,
Don

Yes is does run on low priority.

Yes, BOINC tasks run at low priority. However, it uses "idle" priority in Windows and plain low priority in Linux.

Windows' "idle" priority guarantees that BOINC interferes very little with other applications, running tasks only when there's nothing else to run or during disk accesses.

There's no equivalent "idle" priority in Linux, so BOINC's low priority tasks get at least about 5% of CPU time, which can interfere noticeably with the performance of other applications.

If you're running OS-X and given that it uses the BSD kernel, related to the Linux kernel, it's possible that BOINC uses plain low priority on it too.

HTH