diff --git a/crates/xenia-cpu/src/scheduler.rs b/crates/xenia-cpu/src/scheduler.rs
index 8ea53a6..aba1905 100644
--- a/crates/xenia-cpu/src/scheduler.rs
+++ b/crates/xenia-cpu/src/scheduler.rs
@@ -1293,7 +1293,15 @@ impl Scheduler {
         };
         t.quantum_remaining = QUANTUM_DEFAULT;
         self.recompute_slot_runnable(r.hw_id);
-        tracing::info!(
+        // DEBUG, not INFO: this fires once per timed-wait deadline-wake, which
+        // during the boot idle-spin happens hundreds of thousands of times. At
+        // INFO it floods the console/log file and throttles the interactive
+        // `exec --ui` path so hard (≈286K lines flushed to disk) that the guest
+        // crawls and never reaches the ~30–150M-instruction splash window —
+        // which masqueraded as a "--ui early termination" (iterate-3R). The
+        // headless `check` path runs `--quiet` (WARN) so it was never throttled.
+        // No execution-semantics change; deterministic golden is unaffected.
+        tracing::debug!(
             "scheduler: advanced to deadline {} waking hw={} idx={}",
             deadline,
             r.hw_id,