AMD Balanced vs AMD High Performance Power Plan (?)

[Katarn]

I just got a Ryzen 5 3600.

 

I have a quick question: Is there a consensus on the best power plan?

How big of an impact on performance does one experience with the AMD Ryzen Balanced plan (which is what it was set to by default) over the AMD Ryzen High Performance plan?

 

Thanks

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, Katarn said:

I just got a Ryzen 5 3600.

Shouldn't really matter which one, it's more for laptops, but just leave it on high performance anyways

[Sorenson]

if you have the cooling and your power bill isn't killing you go for high performance. 

[Katarn]

Is it a good idea to leave the power plan on Balanced, and just change it to High Performance whenever I'm rendering, working, or gaming?

 

Does High Performance over-clock the CPU automatically, or does it just allow it to work at its default clock, i.e. does Balanced run at lower than the default specs?

 

12 hours ago, Streetguru said:

Shouldn't really matter which one, it's more for laptops, but just leave it on high performance anyways

Doesn't High Performance wear out the CPU?

 

12 hours ago, Sorenson said:

if you have the cooling and your power bill isn't killing you

What qualifies as "the cooling" and a power bill that "isn't killing me"?

Will I get a substantially higher power bill if I go for High Performance?

 

 

[Sorenson]

1 hour ago, Katarn said:

Is it a good idea to leave the power plan on Balanced, and just change it to High Performance whenever I'm rendering, working, or gaming?

 

Does High Performance over-clock the CPU automatically, or does it just allow it to work at its default clock, i.e. does Balanced run at lower than the default specs?

 

Doesn't High Performance wear out the CPU?

 

What qualifies as "the cooling" and a power bill that "isn't killing me"?

Will I get a substantially higher power bill if I go for High Performance?

 

 

I found this on reddit: https://amp.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/9xof97/ryzen_2nd_gen_windows_power_plans_benchmarks/

[Streetguru]

5 hours ago, Katarn said:

Doesn't High Performance wear out the CPU?

No, that's only if you are overclocking with very high voltage 24/7

[Mark Kaine]

Actually I've tested this quite a bit "high performance" is worse for gaming because it prefers multi threaded applications,  so "balanced" is the way to go if your primary usage case is games. 

There was basically no difference between windows "balanced" and "ryzen balanced" however. 

 

 

Funny enough since the last chipset update all "ryzen powerplans" are gone missing on my system, not sure what's up with that... But I don't really care much because finally the CPU (3600) works as intended,  parking its cores while idling and generally not idling at 1.5 volt anymore lol.

 

 

[Katarn]

On 11/3/2019 at 4:51 PM, Sorenson said:

I found this on reddit: https://amp.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/9xof97/ryzen_2nd_gen_windows_power_plans_benchmarks/

That is an informative read, but it's from 2018, and it is about Ryzen 2, not 3. It also does not have the AMD High Performance setting.

 

On 11/3/2019 at 11:29 PM, Mark Kaine said:

"high performance" is worse for gaming because it prefers multi threaded applications,  so "balanced" is the way to go if your primary usage case is games.

I game and work with Blender 3D, among other CPU intensive software.

Should I just switch from one to the other depending on what I do?

There is also a slider in the Power & Sleep settings menu. Currently the slider is in the middle. Should I slide it to the right (towards Best performance) or leave it as it is?

 

I tested it last night with Metro: Exodus, and apart from the game slowing down to 45 FPS (on both settings) without the CPU going much over 50% utilization, I can't tell if there's a difference.

[Mark Kaine]

10 minutes ago, Katarn said:

That is an informative read, but it's from 2018, and it is about Ryzen 2, not 3. It also does not have the AMD High Performance setting.

 

I game and work with Blender 3D, among other CPU intensive software.

Should I just switch from one to the other depending on what I do?

There is also a slider in the Power & Sleep settings menu. Currently the slider is in the middle. Should I slide it to the right (towards Best performance) or leave it as it is?

 

I tested it last night with Metro: Exodus, and apart from the game slowing down to 45 FPS (on both settings) without the CPU going much over 50% utilization, I can't tell if there's a difference.

I can't tell you,  you'd have to look up what each of those programs prefers, multi threaded or single,  afaik depends on the program but most 3D applications that aren't games indeed would benefit from multi threaded performance. 

 

As for that slider, I have no clue,  I think it does nothing and is only meant for laptops tbh... 

 

Well,  I did test this with 3D mark, Superstition, several  games...  "high performance" gave significantly worse results,  no exceptions. 

 

It's not that the settings don't work as intended,  they just have bad names that don't really tell you what they do (as in multi / single performance) 

[Gemini Saga]

In this video you can see it makes no difference at all which power plan you use:
https://youtu.be/0IbXxEQ0Fhw

[theriverlethe]

On 7/19/2020 at 6:06 AM, Gemini Saga said:

In this video you can see it makes no difference at all which power plan you use:
https://youtu.be/0IbXxEQ0Fhw

The OP clearly indicates he’s interested in more than gaming, but I guess it’s good to know that these options won’t HURT performance.