That is half of a second to prepare the 7:41 track
Of course it is not !
Ok Johan, I have made a mistake in my previous analysis ...
Let's take the last X3 log file;
Note : The trackload is allowed to take 14 seconds. This normally allows for a complete CD to load easily (a good fast system will need 7 seconds for that).
At 13:21:49 (rounded) the first track is ready to play. It lasts 1:22. So, assuming playback of it starts immediately after this (and it should, especially for the first track) it will last until 13:21:40 + 1:22 = 13:23:02. Now, 14 seconds before it ends, the next track will start loading if present. This should be at 13:23:02 - 14 = 13:22:48. However, this happens at 13:23:03 which is 15 seconds too late.
The withgoing XX file shows that at 13:21:44 XXEngine3 acknowledges that it has started, which by itself is visible in the X3 file.
Back to the X3 file; this shows that 13:21:44 the Wallpaper commences to change, but, in your case this seems to take 2.5 seconds at least. Why at least ? because this is a parallel proces (ChangeWP) and XXEngine3 does not need to wait for it. However, since it takes 2.5 seconds (from 13:21:44.77 to 13:21:47.20) before XXEngine3 comes to the stage the music file is found it must be the conclusion that ChangeWP eats the CPU time the loading in XXEngine3 needs. But, the "loading" itself only starts after "music file found" and ahead of that it hardly does anything. It is fuzzing around with the .dat files a bit, similar to what you see 13:23:03.7680290 (but which doesn't show at the first track because the first track is treated differently).
In the XX file we can see that the second track starts to do something at 13:22:57, which does not comply to the 14 seconds XXEngine3 reserves, but which includes XXHighEnd to be fast or slow at her timing. But, XXEngine3 will start waiting for the new track from off 13:22:48, as calculated before.
The XX file shows that the track is there at 13:23:00.144, thus it took 3 seconds for XXHighEnd to ... fuzz around with .dat files again. There were no conversions, nothing.
At 13:23:00.192 XXEngine3 tells that it has found the info on the new track;
X3 shows that at 13:23:03.76 it starts doing something with it. This looks impossible to me. Remember, the first track lasts until 13:23:02. So it actually has finished playing already. At that stage (finished playing) it is looking for new track data each 20ms. The 13:23:00.192 shows that it did find the track data, but it lasts 3.5 seconds before it "wanted" to do something with it. Even at being idle (the 20ms loop) it takes over 1.5 seconds to start doing something.
Johan, you have a serious problem in your PC;
Your processor seems to have difficulties with multitasking, and switching tasks in general. Try get an Intel instead (if one fits in the socket).
Besides that, you have some serious problems with hdd data access. Although, it may derive from the same origine.
Also keep in mind the very strange problem you have with not having access to the data (.dat) files if I only treat them in that one particular way (which I luckily could avoid).
It
looks like you are having additional problems with the writing time to the display, which somehow may be logic for the kind of special display (and probably interface + driver) you have.
I can imagine that other settings of Core Appointment help, and the best might be "No Appointment" as well as not setting the priorities ("Nothing") might help to some extend. But reboot after changing the settings to "nothing", because nothing is not explicit, and old settings may stick otherwise.
My best advise would be to get another motherboard for EUR 80 or so and with a processor like a core 2 duo E6600 this is doable I think. I may save your from lot of troubles.
Peter