High Performance Power Plan vs Balanced Power Plan

Is the high performance power plan worth turning or or should you just stay on the balanced plan? I've had a few people criticize my recommendation on using the high performance power plan. So I decided I wanted to test it and see if they are right. my findings are actually quite surprising.

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[KabukeeJo]

Very good explanation of the differences between the power plan settings. I honestly just use Balanced as I don't need the additional boost from the performance setting.

[WSS_the_OG]

Nice one, good sir. I have to admit I enabled the High Performance plan some time back, and forgot about it, and never bothered testing, so this info was very useful! Thanks!!

[АлександрСтепанов-ыд]

Thank you for such a profound look into these power modes.

[vexun]

Great video. Run these tests at 1080p as well to put more pressure on the cpu, also the higher performance power plans are about reducing latency more than increasing fps.

[kedrprao]

Wow this video just helped a ton. Cheers man!

[gazzola]

On an Intel processor, setting "High Performance" doesn't let the processor idle at 800 mhz...

[berkay]

3:07 I also have ryzen 5 5600. It reaches 4.4 ghz(and stays) while gaming on balanced mode.


It also reaches 4.4 ghz at very demanding tasks other than gaming. Such as stockfish analysis using lichess.




I think the difference only exists in light tasks. For example when you open an app, cpu boosts its frequency for short amount of time. Under balanced mode it boosts to 4 ghz as you said. (I need more testing to confirm this but so far it only reaches 4ghz for light tasks) Under high performance it reaches 4.4ghz.



But both balanced and high performance mode reaches 4.4ghz under heavy tasks.

[Sevicify]

2:20 While that setting is indeed set to 60% for balanced plan I'm not sure it is actually having any impact, at least in my experience with my Ryzen 5800x on Windows 10 21H1 with latest chipset drivers. My CPU boosts 4.45 GHz for all cores and 4.7 GHz for single core for both the balanced and high performance plans, so this setting is having zero impact to my boost clocks despite the plans having a setting value (I verified balanced is set to 60 with the explorer program). Different generation or Intel CPUs, different versions of Windows or different chipset drivers may cause it to behave differently but to me this setting seems to be having no effect on my actual boost clocks.

[ThePunisherAR-]

I can confirm that High Performance plan and the Ultimate Performance plan give me smoother gaming experience i didn't see increase in fps but the game was more stable i got less stutters while with power saver mode and balanced i would see a lot of stutter so my advice would be turn on high performance or ultimate plan while gaming and then switch back to balanced or power saver when not gaming.

[JonelKingas]

its not much of fps increase to use high or ultra or custom power plan, but latency of the system improves a lot, and stutters.

[kirfuss]

Great and well thought through video. Glad someone finally explains what it does instead of saying "keep it disabled it doesnt help and wastes power" or "enable it for lots more fps". I think higher low's can be significantly more important higher fps average and this setting improves those a good bit.

[FranklySean]

Great video! I've been debating whether these settings still did anything. Good to know!

[SeanDevonshire]

Great video Rich, Thanks for the breakdown & insight between the two schemes.

To those with desktops that are watching, ahh theres not much here to play with, that you may havnt already played with in the bios, apart from some fine tuning, how quickly she ramps up or down etc

However, those that are watching with Laptops, that want to achive, a more swift responsiveness in the lower operation of your CPU, or more importantly for Thermal control - This is a great vid to start out, And get a base understanding of what youre dealing with amungst these settings

[Rampage]

"Make your own video and keep it out if it" I was dying lol

[spudc]

Thanks, great explanation that covers the topic in a way that can be easily understood.

[shotover]

Very insightful piece. Good feedback on the differences between the plans with actual data. What would be very helpful for this analysis is to understand the actual energy consumption difference between the plans. So energy consumption for each plan with each benchmark provided. There is a lot of commentary of "it is more" but how much? So 1%, 10%, 50% and the actual kwh consumed -- so you can determine the actual cost to the performance difference.

[mediocreape]

such a well researched video!! thank you for all the information!! great viddeo!!

[DavidNationSr]

i thought the power was just to keep the monitor from shutting off

[lancewkarasek]

i dont know why but on my 7800x3d windows 11 professional, my default high performance minimum processor state setting is 0% just like the balanced plan. i clicked restore plan defaults to be sure. I am unsure/undecided to change it. i also dont have any power setting plans other than power saver, balanced, and high performance. but i did get this built from nzxt in mid june 2024 so maybe things have changed. its on a Rog STRIX x670E-E Gaming WIFI with ddr5 6800 set to 6000 (didn't do enough ram research before buying). I am going to try the high performance default settings for now, switching from balanced.

[antonip]

for outlook and chome, basically what I have open 10h/day, save mode is more than enough. CPU drops to below 2GHz and not crazy 4.8 or so. Fans are also dead quiet.