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Balanced vs High Performance vs Ultimate power plan?

Omie
By Omie
in Windows
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Is there a general consensus on what power option (Balanced vs High Performance vs Ultimate) to set in Windows when it comes to gaming PC’s?

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Just stick with balanced. Once upon a time when dynamic frequency scaling was way more janky high performance was useful because it locked your processor at its maximum speed. Now that they've gotten better, basically the only difference is your computer will use significantly more power at idle on high performance.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

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Intel Core i7-11700K | Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black | ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming WiFi  | 32 GB G.SKILL TridentZ 3200 MHz | ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3080 | 1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD | 2TB WD Blue M.2 SATA SSD | Seasonic Focus GX-850 | Fractal Design Meshify C | Windows 10 Pro

 

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Posted

Balanced. 

 

"High Performance" has been shown to reduce latencies between frames in benchmarks. But the difference is very little, and about the only people that would care are elite first-person shooter players. But for casual play, it wont impact your score.

Probably improves by 0.1% at best give or take.

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-> Moved to Windows

^^^^ That's my post ^^^^
<-- This is me --- That's your scrollbar -->
vvvv Who's there? vvvv

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Posted
On 10/8/2021 at 11:32 PM, Omie said:

Is there a general consensus on what power option (Balanced vs High Performance vs Ultimate) to set in Windows when it comes to gaming PC’s?

As everyone said but will add 3 actual benefits of High Performance mode and up, that is actually the most significant:

 

  • Winter is coming (unless you are in Australia), and it will warm out your room at the same time as powering your PC. This will make it quite an efficient space heater, especially when you game or do something demanding.
  • The added fan noise that your PC will make could potentially mask your neighborhood wonderful music taste/skill/party. This especially true with cheap fans
  • Support your local economy, by paying more your electric company. 

Bonus:

  • In laptops or desktops which have only a basic cooling solutions, the added heat produced by your CPU will prevent it from boosting it's clock as much as before. If you find your PC too fast for you, where you feel like you are loosing control, this is a great way to slow it down a bit.

 

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  • 2 years later...
Posted

Minor latency improvement with multitasking when going High Performance. For me (Ryzen 5900x), with PBO enabled, the cpu frequencies are the same as balanced or power saving, and the energy consumption (wattage) of the computer when idle, is the same with every power plans. The OS and the Motherboard do the big job of handling the power. Power plans are fine tuning the operating system. None of them are automaticaly the best option. Depends on the use and workflow.

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For stability I would not recommend Balanced power plan.

When I used it on my pc it caused random massive stutter issues in Windows that stayed until I rebooted. When I switched to using High performance the issues stopped showing up.

 

The cpu temperatures are about the same with High performace as they were with Balanced.

I have an I5 13400 with the included stock fan. It's about 40 degrees when idle and 50 to 55 when gaming.

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