These features may influence power use and performance in ways not fully disclosed.
These features may influence power use and performance in ways not fully disclosed.
I just installed a Seasonic Platinum rated power supply since my city has some of the highest electricity rates in the USA. I checked it with a kill-a-watt and adjusted the settings. The changes are noticeable: instead of staying at 120 watts, it drops to 99 watts. Still, the machine runs slower and certain operations take longer. That’s not ideal, so I had to turn it off. Also, the “balanced” and “high performance” modes use similar power levels. It seems the settings affect how aggressively the CPU adjusts its clock speed, which isn’t explained in the menu options. This might be something Linus or Tech Jesus explored in depth. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Power Plan were introduced since Windows Vista. It brought new power saving features of system hardware that used to be traditionally, a hardware thing only. Back in XP days, hardware, such as CPUs would need to guess when a load is coming and going. Since Vista, you have this collaboration, if you will, between the OS (Vista and up) and the hardware. This resulted in much higher accuracy and response time. Balance is the recommended power settings. NOTE: For AMD based systems, if you have an "AMD" version of the option, this would be the recommended one to use. Power Saver is to conserve power, as the name suggests. It slows down several hardware components and therefore reduces power usage in exchange of saving power. Some of the behaviors of each profile can be configured via the advance settings panel (pick "Change plan settings" > "Changed advance power settings"). What's the differences between plans: Power Saver - Forces the system to a low power state, limiting performance, to save as much power as possible Balance - Hardware power usage will fluctuate based on usage. It will attempt to conserve power when the system is idle and go full power when needed only. It is very responsive, especially with modern hardware. High Performance - All hardware goes full blast power (although some hardware, like some CPUs might partially ignore this (unless its power saving features is disabled in the BIOS/UEFI). High Performance can lead to lower system performance. With modern processors of today which can boost above its specs momentarily based on temperature (and avail. power from the motherboard), setting the system to High Performance, increases system temperatures, including the processor itself, which leads the processor in question not being able to clock faster for as long as it would normally be able to... or at all (all depending on how good or bad your CPU cooling is). Note: Some system might only have "Balance". These are Modern Standby (formerly called: Connected Standby) supported systems, and to offer smartphone-type power management to PCs, hence why there is only 1 mode. The specs require specific power control to the OS (kinda like a certification, if you will), and has a set of system requirements like the system can't have an HDD, and have TPM 2.0 chip)
Thanks for the update. This adjustment to the AMD chipset drivers might have improved performance under load while lowering power consumption during idle periods. It seems like Windows is now handling power states more efficiently, allowing the CPU to ramp up quickly when needed and shut down significantly when background tasks are minimal. The CEC 2019 feature appears to be disabled in the BIOS, which likely reduces power usage but adds a noticeable delay in startup time—possibly a trade-off for better efficiency.