Max 'settles down'?

Just curious on this one really. I'm running a frankly ludicrous patch - not only does it have some extremely expensive DSP going on but also page after page of relatively expensive interface objects to boot. Amazingly, it just about works, but it's right on the edge- I really have to fiddle with the settings of audio, scheduler etc. to get a balance that works.

My question is this: it seems to me that when I start working with the patch it's a little unhappy - I get occasional audio glitches and the interface is intermittently very laggy (it's always a bit laggy with this patch to be honest!). In the activity monitor it looks like there are processor spikes from time to time. However, after a while - like an hour - it seems to sort of settle down and start to behave more smoothly. I don't think it's anything intrinsic to the patch, which is doing much the same things during this time.

Anyone think why that might be? It might be my imagination of course. It's not the very worst problem I could have - better than it starting OK then getting worse!

For what it's worth, I'm actually running this in Max 6, which seems marginally more capable of running it (though there's not much in it).