For pruning that forest of running tasks, turn to Iobit's Razer Game Booster (free). Game Booster examines your operating environment and selectively shuts down services and programs not directly related to the game you're playing.

The result of shedding those unwanted processes is a noticeable increase in responsiveness and framerate performance, especially in laptop systems where every clock cycle counts. Sporting ready-to-use profiles for many popular titles, Game Booster attempts to streamline the process many gamers manually perform to get the best numbers from their favorite titles, but reduces the strip-down procedure to a single button push. New features add screenshot and gameplay video capture modes to the toolbox. Although there has been talk of transition to a paid service, Razer Game Booster remains free.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.