>>A good point - that can be checked on Win8 using PerfMon: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-use-perfmon-performance-monitor-windows , selecting the counter Logical >Disk...Average Disk Queue Length as a first cut. My understanding is an average value over 2 probably means a bottleneck.
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>>Perhaps the problem is not CPU-bound but rather IO-bound? (i.e. the bottleneck is in disc I/O rather than lack of "number-crunching" ability of CPU)
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>Is there some setting or something else that can improve the performance of an SSD? I ask because you are suggesting the problem could be the HD IO. If that were the case what could he change. I thought the SSD was that fastest he could get.

Ah, I missed he already has an SSD. Still, it doesn't take long to see if HD I/O is nonetheless a bottleneck.

It also depends on how the system is set up. If everything's running from the SSD, fine. If Windows is on a magnetic drive and some or all of the app's working files are not on the SSD, maybe not fine.

If HD I/O isn't a bottleneck, and he's seeing 17% CPU utilization maybe he's only running one instance of his app. Maybe run 4 instances, each with 1/4 of the files to process. On a 4770K with 4 cores and HT (8 logical cores) that leaves some CPU for other stuff. I've seen claims for HT performance improvements of anywhere from 10 to 25%.