A method provides adaptive interrupt latency to improve performance in a processing system. A ration of transmit queue depth to receive queue depth of the adapter is compared to its historical value in order to provide an estimate of processor load. The estimated processor load is then used to set a parameter that controls the frequency of an interrupt generator, which may be controlled by setting an interrupt queue depth threshold, packet frequency threshold or interrupt hold-off time value. The historical value may be predetermined, user-settable, obtained during a calibration interval or obtained by taking a long-term average of the ratio.