iStat Widget: what does "nice" mean?

[valdore]

I have the iStat widget installed to give me information about system activity. What is the "nice" and what does it mean?

 

[Mac'Mo]

i believe i have hte iStat2 and its great ubt now it asks me to like type in a number every time i hit f12. I guess this was the trial? Does anyone know if iStat2 isn't freeware and i guess i wore out the trial? is iStat (not 2) freeware?

 

[mad jew]

I believe nice prioritises different processes.

 

[valdore]

I believe nice prioritises different processes.

Thanks.

that article is rather technical though. what's it mean when the istat widget says the nice is 80% or 90% or 98% or whatever?

I do run World Community Grid (protein folding) and seti@home on the machine, and I know that impacts it, but that's about all...

 

[Compile 'em all]

Nice Precentage is the Percentage of CPU time used by tasks that are running using nice. These processes are using a non standard priority level to give them more or less priority.

 

[bousozoku]

Thanks.

that article is rather technical though. what's it mean when the istat widget says the nice is 80% or 90% or 98% or whatever?

I do run World Community Grid (protein folding) and seti@home on the machine, and I know that impacts it, but that's about all...

That nice seems to be whatever is taking the majority of the CPU, according to my observations running Activity Monitor and the iStat application.

nice in general is supposed to signal that a process gets a certain relative priority, though all user processes could be set to the same number, higher or lower than the default.