This may be all wrong, anyway:
I have found, that if I open Windows Job Manager and check performance, Aurora is only using one core (I have a dual-core machine). But if I give Aurora a higher priority, it begins using the second core, sometimes so much, that my machine seems to freeze (both cores at 100%). Aurora is not multi-core capable, so what happens, I believe, is that Aurora uses some windows standard routines (like read/write), and that those routines then get their own core when Aurora is prioritized.
I may be wrong, but I believe that turns take a little less time to compute, when Aurora is prioritized. Not so much that I actually feel the difference every turn, but I believe that in the long run I may save quite some time.