What is the real difference between high-performance and ultimate performance on Windows 11?
What is the real difference between high-performance and ultimate performance on Windows 11?
Unfortunately I don't even think MS knows it well enough. Check out this article for more info: Which Power Plan should you use in Windows 11 and when? There are three main power plans in Windows 11/10. They are High Performance, Balanced & Power saver. Read the pros and cons of each plan. www.thewindowsclub.com
I can't honestly say I've ever seen that on a regular Windows setup. Maybe it's a special power plan you put there? Nevermind, I'm fixed now. How to turn on the Ultimate Performance Power Plan in Windows 10? Ultimate performance comes with its own price tag. www.howtogeek.com
Most of the time, on Ultimate settings, your hardware won't ever sleep. That means the CPU and GPU, as well as USB and SSDs, stay awake all the time. This can make things get hotter when you are just sitting there waiting to do something. It might also use up more of the processor's energy. When it comes to how long these parts last while they stay on, I don't know for sure if they wear out faster. But since everything is always running, maybe that would be true.
I don't bother running things all the time. Do you want your PC always hot? I used to have a Samsung SSD with performance optimization on while keeping the CPU overclocked. It works well when the computer is fast and cool. But if the CPU isn't maxing out, it doesn't need to run at full speed for just a desktop setup. Eventually, I turned off both things. Doing this in the summer causes problems.
Here are your three default settings:
Power saver: Almost all peripheral power-saving options are turned on or set to their most aggressive mode. The CPU cores are also parked in balanced mode.
Balanced: Most peripheral power-saving options are either on or set to a moderate level. The CPU cores are not parked.
High Power: Almost all peripheral power-saving options are turned off. The CPU cores stay awake and the parking option is disabled.
It's important to note that there are likely many hidden settings when you change advanced power options. For example, running `powercfg -attributes sub_processor perfboostmode -attrib_hide` shows the option for CPU boosting behavior, while `powercfg -attributes sub_processor 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583 -attrib_hide` shows the option for core parking. Surprisingly, the CPU boosting behavior for all three settings is "Aggressive."
I also noticed that even in High Power mode, the computer's power management still kicks in by lowering clock speeds and entering low-power states (C-states). There might be another setting to turn this off, but it probably only works inside the BIOS. Also, video cards (at least the ones from NVIDIA, since I don't have an AMD one to check) will lower their clocks even if you say something like "prefer maximum performance." PCIe link power management only changes things if the PCI-E bus is allowed to drop in speed to save power.
In any case, the only real difference between picking anything higher than Balanced might be slightly more consistent performance. But as long as high-performance stuff is running, the hardware probably won't go into a low-power state anyway. If you want steady performance, you'll have to lock down the clock speeds.
I'm still using an old AMD Ryzen Balanced chip because I missed the newer options back then.
For Zen 3, you probably don't need it anymore. Windows Balanced lets the CPU do what it should. I think that's because newer versions of AGESA fixed some software bugs over time. But when I updated every single chipset driver, there was always a Ryzen Balanced plan available. Don't bother trying! 🤣 It is still needed for Zen 3xxx and 2xxx systems according to me.