ORIGINAL: witpqs
I don't know if this will help...
They put in a switch to allow you to assign AE to a specific cpu. Note that this is different than the -SingleCpuOrders that works during the orders mode. This is, for example -cpu2 or -cpu4 and so on. AFAIK it will stop AE from trying to use multiple processors, and it will assign it to the processor you specify. So obviously you want to specify one that is not running lots of other stuff all the time. I would avoid -cpu1 because I assume (but do not know) that lots of little administrative stuff will always go there.
BTW, this is for the number of processors that your system appears to have, not for how many physical cores it has. Many PCs these days have (just for example) 4 cores that are hyper-threaded so that each core looks (and acts) like 2 processors, so the PC looks (and acts) like it has 8 processors.
Hope this helps, I really don't know if it will fix what you are seeing.
Not exactly, the -cpux is which of the cores you want the game to use. If you specify a number greater than the number of cores the system actually has, it will use core #1. If you don't have this switch in there, it will use all cores available and there is a problem with some DirectX calls with multicore processors and some video card drivers. By using -cpux you will use the core specified only. The -cpu number also uses the physical number of cores. Hyperthreading is going out of fashion now as it's energy inefficient and causes a lot of cache refreshes, but hyperthreading could cause the game to slow down.
Bill