Playing music while compiling code lags the music, what kind of laptop CPUs avoid this?

Question

When I play music while compiling code on my laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo T8300), the music stutters and lags. In terms of laptops, what Intel CPUs are capable of compiling without interruptions in my music? For example, would a 2nd generation core i5 be up to the task?

I ask because I do Android development in Eclipse, and the auto-compile occurs often. I know I can compile manually, but the problem is still apparent. For music, I use sources from Youtube, SoundCloud, and playing music locally.

Answer 1

Applying my old (early 2000s) experience I recommend to either increase the priority for music player or find an option within the player itself to do so. Winamp certainly has this option, look in your player.

Answer 2

Reduce the relative priority of the compiler compared to the music player. More generally, reduce the relative priority of the non-performance-critical process compared to the process that must execute smoothly.

This can be done by either increasing the priority of the music player, or reducing the priority of the compiler.

It's probably easier to increase the priority of the music player, but in general I am always wary of increasing process priority above normal, especially on a CPU-starved system, so would suggest that you first try to lower the priority of Eclipse to one notch below normal. (Use the Task Manager to set priority "below normal" on Windows, nice -n 1 eclipse ... on Linux, ...) That should be inherited by the compiler as well, allowing the music player to run smoothly at the cost of a slight performance degredation of the compilation.