I am a new avast user so I do not know for sure how to interpret the peculiarity of avast in terms of memory usage and process priority. Since I saw a few forummers here that this is normal. I will let it be then. If this has been a frequently asked question, may I suggest that a FAQ post be created and make it sticky in this forum.

Running a process in “HIGH” priority unnecessarily cannot be a good thing. It may gobble up valuable CPU cycle that would have been put to better use in running user applications. I experimented by changing the priority from HIGH to NORMAL. No problem so far after the change. I am looking for a way to make this change permanent. Because ashServ.exe always boot up in “HIGH” priority.