Balanced Power Plan Causes Micro Stutters

RocketJump · March 31, 2019

Does anyone have any idea why setting my power plan to "balanced" causes micro stuttering in games? At first, I thought it might have been something to do with my OC but this happens even on stock settings. I was hoping I didn't have to manually switch profiles every time I launch a game. My setup includes an 8700k, Kraken x62, GeForce GTX 1080 FTW2, RipJaw V DDR4 3000, Aorus Gaming 5, and a Corsair RM 650i.

Streetguru · March 31, 2019

4 minutes ago, RocketJump said:

Does anyone have any idea why setting my power plan to "balanced" causes micro stuttering in games? At first, I thought it might have been something to do with my OC but this happens even on stock settings. I was hoping I didn't have to manually switch profiles every time I launch a game. My setup includes an 8700k, Kraken x62, GeForce GTX 1080 FTW2, RipJaw V DDR4 3000, Aorus Gaming 5, and a Corsair RM 650i.

It's probably just windows being windows

Chronified · March 31, 2019

The first thing you should do when you set up Windows for gaming is to move windows into High Performance mode. Balanced and Power saver work by reducing the clock speed, or when not possible it reduces the effective percentage of the CPU that can be used by programs. (click advanced and go to the CPU section to see).

PCIe powersaving is also used in some systems through that menu, which can cause GPU bottleneck.

Best thing to do is make a custom plan and max everything out, including HDD/Screen times (just put 0 and it'll set to never)

tl;dr

25 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

just windows being windows

RocketJump · March 31, 2019

38 minutes ago, Chronified said:

The first thing you should do when you set up Windows for gaming is to move windows into High Performance mode. Balanced and Power saver work by reducing the clock speed, or when not possible it reduces the effective percentage of the CPU that can be used by programs. (click advanced and go to the CPU section to see).

PCIe powersaving is also used in some systems through that menu, which can cause GPU bottleneck.

Best thing to do is make a custom plan and max everything out, including HDD/Screen times (just put 0 and it'll set to never)

tl;dr

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping there was an alternative way to handle this. I set up my OC with an offset so I could take advantage of adaptive voltage and was hoping to keep speedstep enabled. I guess I'll just switch profiles while gaming.