I think the performance hit is due to your scripts all trying to use the CPU at the same time. Try calling the scripts sequentially, because you don't need all of them running at once (do you??).

@scripts = ('eenie.pl','meenie.pl','foe.pl');
foreach $script ( @scripts )
{
  system( "perl -W".$script );
}
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using system waits until one program finishes running before it executes another one.