The Edit Rules button will open the new consolidated view. It will automatically show the rule types you’re using, along with a default set of common rule types (priorities, affinities, etc.). Right-clicking the header will allow you to select from the full list of rule types.

Double-clicking any field will allow in-line editing or bring up a selection dialog, as is the case with CPU Affinities and CPU Sets.

You can also copy/paste rules from one process to others.

Click the Create button, or the next empty row in the list to bring up the process selection dialog. This same selection dialog has been added to all rule-configuration windows.

Double-click an executable name or its full path, depending on how precise you want the matching to be. Keep in mind that for registry-backed (IFEO) priorities, the base filename must be used.

Dark mode has also been extended throughout all rule-configuration dialogs, creating a much more consistent user experience in dark mode.

Lastly, the sticky CPU Sets feature was made FREE in this version. After pioneering this functionality, it was time to let it fly unencumbered by licensing. This change is part of a continuing effort to make Process Lasso freer and more accessible to everyone. Your continued support of our efforts here at Bitsum makes the development of Process Lasso and other tools possible. We will keep pushing the limits! Thank you!

GPU Priority Classes

With AI workloads increasingly competing for GPU resources, we felt it important to add GPU priority support to Process Lasso. Now users can ensure that their most important GPU workloads, such as gameplay, are prioritized.

Available GPU priority classes are the same as CPU priority classes:

• Real-time
• High
• Above Normal
• Normal
• Below Normal
• Idle

A new GPU priority column is shown in the process lists that indicates the GPU priority class.

Users can set GPU priority rules via the process context menu or by menu item “Options / GPU / GPU Priorities…”.

Unfortunately, GPU priority classes are not inherited by child processes and “Enforce by Registry” (IFEO) methods are not supported. This means that processes protected by anti-cheat systems won’t be able to have their GPU priorities set. In these cases, we recommend instead focusing on ensuring other processes with GPU workloads are set to below normal or idle priorities.

Foreground Boosting

We also refactored the Foreground Boost feature, added GPU priority support, and made it FREE (it was previously a Pro feature)! A new configuration dialog accessible via menu item “Options / CPU / Foreground Boosting…” replaces the less user-friendly menu items found in previous versions.

The new import/export is exposed in two ways. One, you can use the File menu to import or export the specific rules you choose using the “Import Rules” or “Export Rules” menu items, respectively.

You’ll be presented with a dialog asking you which rules you want to import or export.

The “Import/Export Entire Configuration” menu items represent the pre-existing actions to import or export the entire INI configuration file, including non-rule settings. We understand this may be confusing and are working to eventually deprecate those menu items.

The other way is in the process context menu. You’ll get some JSON copied to your clipboard that you can paste by menu item or keyboard shortcut onto other processes.

The JSON will look something like this for an individual process:

{
 "$id": "https://bitsum.com/json-schemas/2026-01-17-00/processlasso.schema.json",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "title": "Process Lasso Rules",
 "description": "Rulesets for Process Lasso",
 "cpuModel": "AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D 16-Core Processor",
 "ruleSets": [
  {
   "cpuAffinity": "1-15",
   "cpuAffinityDelay": 0,
   "ioPriority": "High",
   "ioPriorityEnforcedByRegistry": false,
   "priorityClass": "Above normal",
   "priorityClassEnforcedByRegistry": false,
   "processName": "notepad.exe"
  }
 ]
}

See this page for details of the Process Lasso JSON schema.

For multiple rule exports, the rule orderings are also in the JSON so that they are preserved when imported. The CPU model is included so that it can be matched on import and the user prompted if they are importing rules to a system with a different CPU model.

The process context menu was also adjusted to make room for the new copy/paste menu items by moving some less frequently used features to the More submenu. Finally, the responsiveness color on the graph was changed to a teal for improved visibility.

Enjoy!

We’ve been aware of this alternate method of applying permanent priorities to processes for some time, but we wanted to ensure we could do it right before adding it to Process Lasso. Now that’s done. The feature is cleanly integrated into Process Lasso’s existing process rules and proper cleanup options are given to the user upon config reset or uninstall.

Users can also apply a registry-enforced priority through the process context menu, including the multi-select menu. Simply check “Enforce by Windows Registry” to have your sticky priority rule applied to every new instance of that process.

Finally, there is a dialog to list and remove all priorities saved to the registry. It can be found under the menu item “Options / General / View Priorities Saved to Registry.”

Unfortunately, this alternative method of enforcement only supports priorities, so CPU affinities and other rules won’t work. Furthermore, process matches must be exact; wildcards, paths, and regular expressions cannot be used with this option.

To round out this release, we’ve also added a couple of new process info columns, “Elevated” and “Session ID.” Yes, this will reset your saved column positions—apologies! Finally, we’ve added the process context menu item “Restart as Admin.”

There have also been several other small but important improvements. We hope you enjoy this new release of Process Lasso, and we continue to be grateful that we can provide tools like this to the community.

The CPU Affinity and CPU Sets dialogs now feature varied controls depending on the processor and system configuration. This work began a while back when E-Core and P-Core selection buttons were introduced. We have now expanded these controls for AMD processors, incorporating buttons to select specific CCDs when there are up to 4, and a dropdown list for configurations with more than 4 CCDs. Furthermore, CCDs on AMD 3D V-Cache processors are labeled for frequency and cache cores, which makes it easier to choose the right option for your game or application.

For all processors, controls to select or deselect full columns of 8 logical CPU cores we added. Thus, in any system configuration users can quickly select sets of CPU cores.

On AMD 3D V-Cache processors, cache-centric cores in the process context menu are now marked by an appendage, as shown below.

Finally, after observing that broad match rules (e.g., “*” to match all processes) combined with Forced Mode were causing repetitive logged errors for inaccessible processes, we’ve implemented a suppression mechanism for certain recurring errors to prevent log clutter. This eliminates the need for users to create more selective match phrases that exclude inaccessible processes or to disable logging for those features altogether.

We hope you enjoy these changes as much as we do. As always, thank you for your continued support. We look forward to bringing you more innovative solutions in the future!

Users can create named CPU affinities in the affinity selection dialog (above). Once created, they will also be shown in the process context menus.

The CPU affinity selection dialogs were also cleaned up, hiding instead of disabling controls such as NUMA nodes and processor groups on systems where they aren’t pertinent. Although we’re proud of the expansive processor support of Process Lasso, there’s no need to show off options that don’t apply!

Finally, among other minor changes, this release removes the asterisk that followed priority class names in the process lists. These asterisks indicated that dynamic thread priority boosting, a native Windows feature, was enabled. Since this setting defaults to ON and is therefore almost always enabled, we flipped the logic and now append a hyphen when boosts are disabled. You can toggle dynamic thread priority boosting on or off at the bottom of the CPU Priority submenu.

Version 14 is an important milestone and lays the foundation for further product development. We look forward to continuing to innovate and we thank our users for the patronage that enables us to do so. Please consider purchasing a lifetime license for Process Lasso Pro to support our work. It is a one-time payment that entitles you to all future versions!

Efficiency Mode OFF Rule

The recommended way to prevent a process from having its threads scheduled to E-cores is to create an Efficiency Mode OFF rule with Process Lasso. This can be done by right-clicking the process and selecting ‘Efficiency Mode / Always / OFF’.

This will work even if you do not see the process listed as in Efficiency Mode, because its individual threads can be in Efficiency Mode even if the process as a whole isn’t. An Efficiency Mode OFF rule continuously keeps all of a process’s threads from being automatically relegated to the E-cores.

Although this method will keep most processes off the E-cores, it won’t absolutely forbid a determined application from using the E-cores.

CPU Affinity Rule

If you want to ensure that a process doesn’t use the E-cores, you can create a CPU affinity rule with Process Lasso. This will restrict the process to the P-cores. You can do this by right-clicking the process and selecting ‘CPU Affinity / Always / Select’, then unchecking the E-cores in the dialog, as demarcated by the ‘E’ character.

In some cases, where a determined process changes its own CPU affinity, you may also need to check menu item ‘Options / Forced Mode (continuously reapply settings)’.

CPU Sets are also a viable alternative.

Heterogenous Thread Scheduling Policy

Another method to discourage automatic scheduling to E-cores is to use ParkControl to tweak the Heterogenous Thread Scheduling Policy for Short and Long Running threads, respectively. This is a power plan attribute that controls the scheduler’s treatment of short and long running threads. You can set it to ‘Prefer Performant’ or ‘Performant’ to discourage scheduling threads to E-cores. This method will not prevent processes from choosing to schedule threads to E-cores.

E-Core Icons

We found it important to mark the E-cores on the graphs, so that users can know which type of CPU cores are loaded, and if necessary, use our Efficiency Mode rules to redirect apps to the appropriate core type. This was accomplished by overlaying a leaf icon on the CPU cores. The tooltips are also amended with ‘Efficiency’.

ParkControl Heterogenous Settings

ParkControl also received an in-tandem update to add heterogenous scheduling settings, namely short and long running thread scheduling policies. These power plan settings indicate which core type should be preferred to schedule threads onto. It is no guarantee, but helps to tune the system towards performance or efficiency.

Bitsum Highest Performance Prefers P-Cores

The Bitsum Highest Performance (BHP) power plan now uses ‘Prefer performant’ for both short and long running threads when the system is plugged-in (AC). Existing users won’t have this change automatically applied, but you can optionally use the new menu item in Process Lasso ‘Options / General / Bitsum Highest Performance / Reinitialize’, or ParkControl’s ‘Reset defaults’ link while the BHP plan is selected.

Delayed CPU Affinity Rules

Also new in this release of Process Lasso are delayed CPU affinity rules. This was requested because some games don’t respond well to affinity changes during their startup, but accept them fine a few seconds later. There may be other use cases for this setting as well, such as giving a process access to all CPU cores while it loads, then constraining it.

Remove All Rules Process Action

Finally, there’s a new ‘Remove All Rules’ action to the process context menu. Now, for cases where a process has many rules set, you can quickly clear them all and start fresh for that process. Note that this setting only removes rules specifically targeted to that process, it won’t remove matching wildcard rules.

Conclusion

Those are the highlights of Process Lasso v12.4! For a full list of changes, see the Revision History. We continue to improve all our products thanks to the generous support of our users. Thank you!

Efficiency Mode

Efficiency Mode, introduced in Windows 11, provides a signal to the operating system that a process is not time-critical, and can therefore be deprioritized in relation to other processes, run at a lesser clock speed and/or on efficient cores (E-cores), if available.

With Process Lasso, users can now persist Efficiency Mode ON or OFF for specific processes. The OFF setting is useful for processes that get inappropriately classified as efficient. For instance, you may want to ensure that Efficiency Mode is OFF for a performance critical process. This will keep Windows from scheduling it to E-cores and/or taking other energy saving actions at the cost of execution speed.

So that users can know which running processes are in Efficiency Mode, we added an indicator to the Status column, and moved its default position farther left. The ‘Running’ status shown in previous versions is now implied, so the field will be blank if there’s no other notable status. Therefore, the process status may now be any combination of those listed below. Meanwhile, in the Rules column, the symbols indicating Efficiency Mode always ON or OFF are ‘E’ and ‘e’, respectively.

Status column values:

• Efficiency
• Restrained (by ProBalance)
• Suspended

Rules column symbols:

• E = Efficiency Mode always ON
• e = Efficiency Mode always OFF

Importantly, some processes will have individual threads classified as efficient, rather than the whole process, and that won’t currently be reflected in Process Lasso. In these cases, setting an Efficiency Mode OFF rule will ensure that no threads in the process are classified as efficient.

Users can set Efficiency Mode for a running process by using the context menu, for either the current instance only, or every time that process is run (the ‘always’ submenu).

The Efficiency Mode rules can be managed at app menu item ‘Options / CPU / Efficiency Modes…‘.

We’ve also tied Efficiency Mode into ProBalance, with a new option to turn on Efficiency mode while a process is being acted on by ProBalance. The option defaults to OFF because Efficiency mode is much more heavy-handed than ProBalance’s stock behavior.

System Timer Resolution

In the prior v12.2 release, we also added an oft-requested tool to persist adjustments to the System Timer Resolution, in up to 0.5ms increments. Other tools on the market didn’t allow the user to persist this change, thus requiring it be manually re-applied at every boot. We can’t speak to general efficacy of this tweak, although have no doubt there are cases where it is desirable. Importantly, starting with Windows 10 2004, for processes that do not themselves request a specific timer resolution, this adjustment will have no impact unless you have checked ‘Apply globally’.

Conclusion

We hope that you enjoy these new features! Process Lasso continues to a labor of love that is a privilege to offer to the world. Please feel free to comment below, or contact us with any questions.

Power Modes

Windows Power Modes are overlays of the Balanced power plan that set the system’s power to performance ratio without changing other power settings such as the sleep timeout. They were introduced in Windows 10, build 1709. Portable device users will only know these modes, while desktop users may need to switch to Balanced, and then to a Power Mode (using the Power Performance Slider in the tray or Power Settings) to see them.

The stock Windows Power Modes are:

Support of Power Modes means that all Process Lasso power automation features can make use of them. For instance, users can specify a Power Mode to be entered whenever a particular process is running, or when the device goes idle. In the case of ParkControl, support means that CPU core parking and frequency scaling can be tuned for the individual Power Modes, and the newly refactored Dynamic Boost feature can be configured to use them.

For further reading on Power Modes and the Performance Power Slider, see this page.

CPU Utility % vs CPU Time %

There are multiple valid metrics to represent CPU use. The classical measurement is CPU Time %. This is the percent of available CPU time that the processor spent executing code. The newer measurement, CPU Utility %, is the percent of total computational capacity actually used at the current CPU frequency. It therefore takes into account processor frequency scaling and can exceed 100%.

CPU Utility % is used by Task Manager, and now by Process Lasso for the CPU graphs. An option allows the user to toggle which metric is displayed. Meanwhile, the process list still shows CPU Time %, matching Task Manager’s ‘Details’ view, but not its ‘Processes’ view since that uses CPU Utility %. Process Lasso has always shown both metrics in its status bar, and that continues.

For more information on CPU Utility %, see this page.

3995WX CPU Topology

Finally, it is worth noting that this release supports a new Windows CPU topology that allows a single NUMA node to span multiple processor groups, used namely by the AMD 3995WX CPU on Windows 11. Previous editions of Windows would have split the 128 logical CPU cores of the AMD 3995WX into two NUMA nodes bounded by the two processor groups.

We hope you enjoy these new product releases, and appreciate the continued support of our customers that makes further development possible. See the full revision history here.