"Balanced" vs "High Performance" power saver?
"Balanced" vs "High Performance" power saver?
Hey. I know this is an old thread but I still couldn't find a reliable answer to that question but I got some hints that it might matter when gaming (and that's also what I believe to see on my PC). Transitions between frequencies and voltages are governed by “P-States.” P-states are frequency/voltage combinations requested by the operating system. Processors receive these requests all the time, and act on them by selecting matching states built into the hardware. The Windows-default Balanced plan, in the interest of balancing power and performance, sets higher thresholds and longer timers for transitions into faster P-states than the High Performance plan. This can sometimes limit how quickly our processor responds to “go faster” promptings from high-demand applications. I would actually love to see some benchmark regarding this. CPU usage has to vary a lot for this to matter, like it normally does in gaming. But as I said, I haven't found any other useful informations or benchmarks.
I see the base frequency drops to 800MHz in the hardware manager. This could fix VRM problems with the Gigabyte B460M DS3H V2 using an I5-11600K. No heatsink on the VRMs either. It might also stop fan surges caused by the VRMs. These VRMs are weak on this board. Under load, the CPU draws 119 watts and around 10 watts when idle. Balanced is the best choice for regular desktop tasks and watching YouTube. High performance keeps the CPU running at full speed all the time. I haven’t noticed how this impacts gaming. Check the Hardware monitor’s CPU frequency while not running a benchmark, then compare to when it is running a stress test in CPUz. The CPU slows to 800 MHz during the benchmark and reaches 4.598GHz while running under stress. In High Performance mode it clocks at 4.898 GHz on my PC. VRM issues are present on my board. My advice is to keep the performance setting balanced unless you’re gaming with heavy titles like GTA 5. If you prefer gaming, use High Performance most of the time. For most of my usage, I stick with Balanced since I mainly watch YouTube.