CPU Performance / Windows Performance Plan ( Min/Max CPU Speed, Core Parking, etc.)

This is for power users, people who want to make sure their CPU speeds stay at one consistent speed while gaming (or whenever), and for people who want to make sure all their cores/threads are fully active while gaming (or whenever).

Make sure you read the notes at the bottom of this post

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1a) Set the minimum speed/frequency your CPU will run at

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1b) Set the maximum speed/frequency your CPU will run at

Source http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/51027-power-options-add-remove-min-max-processor-state.html

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2. Disable Core Parking

Source http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/unlock-core-parking.196807/

[HR][/HR]Further Info and "pointers"

- According to the link, it says you must disable Intel Virtualization in your BIOS for option 1 a/b to work. 99% of users will never use/need Intel Virtualization. If you don't know what Intel Virtualization is then you almost certainly don't use it.

- The first pic can be misleading; for your high performance/custom gaming profile you want "minimum processor state" to also be at 100%, not 5% like in the picture

- You don't have to edit the default Windows power states ("power saving", "normal", and |high performance"). What you can do is create a new power plan profile while making sure to select the default "High Performance" plan as the base starting point for this new, custom profile, then edit it from there. Call it "High Performance - Custom" or "Gaming" or whatever you want.

- Depending on your BIOS settings, you may still have CPU throttling and such. CPUs throttle/adjust clocks two ways, from windows and from the BIOS power saving features themselves. So if you still have C-states enabled you may still get throttling/clock adjustements. I have been disabling all my C-States in my BIOS for many years now (2500K and 4930K). Some people also report slightly higher/more stable or less voltage-needed CPU overclocks when all the C-States are disabled, another reason I always disabled them.

- The percentages don't always scale accordingly. For example, for me (4930K), 100% CPU speed is my overclocked frequency (4.5 GHz). 99% is my full non-overclocked speed 3.3 GHz, then from there it drops in small increments depending on percentage until it get's to a certain point, it may be 22%, 35%, 12%, whatever, but at a certain point going any lower on the percentages wont drop the CPU speed anymore (mine won't go below about 1.2 GHz). My gaming/full performance profile is set to to minimum 100% (4.5 GHz ) and max 100% (4.5 GHz), and my web surfing/general use profile is set from minimum (1.2 GHz) to 99% (3.3GHz). Having my CPU voltage and frequency shoot to their overclocked settings (1.41-ish volts and 4.5 GHz) - not to mention the added heat and power usage - is completely unnecessary while web surfing, watching a movie, doing general desktop work, etc.

- Core parking can make a massive difference and really screw up your performance, as the above video proves. Windows 7 often does a terrible job making sure all your cores are not parked/not "sleeping". If you have Windows 8/8.1 you shouldn't have to worry about managing the core parking as Win 8/8.1 manages it much, much better, but I still like making sure it's set to 100%/100% in my Win 8.1 system just in case.




For idle, lower power, no usage:

- I notice that when my PC is idle, I still see the CPU clock speed fluctuating (not to max clocks or anywhere around there, but the frequency fluctuating still bothers me and uses power), so I made another custom power profile called "Idle" and I have the maximum and minimum processor states both set to a low enough value where there are no more clock speed adjustments, it's just constantly pegged at it's absolute minimum that the CPU allows, which on my 4930K is, I believe, 1.2 GHz.

- I also have PCI-E power, and all sorts of other power things in my "idle" power profile set to max power saving/least performance

- Finally, I have the core parking settings set so that the max amount of cores become disabled/"sleep" in order to effectively only have 1 single core running at 1.2 GHz while idle (the remaining cores are parked/"asleep").

 

Nice, thank you.

 

http://coderbag.com/Programming-C/CPU-core-parking-manager

 

I tested this with my i5-2500k @ 4.3Ghz (which automatically downclocks to 1.6Ghz when idle). No change in rf2 solo live benchmark results and cpu utilisation graphs look identical.

 

Then your CPU wasn't downclocking at any time during gameplay, or turning off any cores which rF2 was trying to use, which is great and how it should be

Many Windows 7 users had major stutters with highly multithreaded games like Battlefield 3 and 4 and such when online in 64-player MP servers. Disabling core parking made massive differences to stutters and fps for many people.

With this, I can now make sure my CPU is constantly pegged at whatever clock I want it to be during gameplay, none of that dynamic based-on-load crap where the CPU sometimes adjusts up and down from, for eg. 4.2 GHz, then 3.95, 2.8, 4.05, etc. Can't stand all that crap (CPU or GPU wise, ie. NVidia GPU boost crap).

 

This software is mainly for people don't not play with Bios/ and or have older motherboards.

Make a few motherboard profiles and between gaming/workload sessions do a reboot.

I usually reboot before every gaming session if I have been multi-tasking, yadda , anyways.

However personally I lock whatever I run, all power disabled and cores are set in Bios.


More people whom never overclock should click that " Advanced OC" menu and learn a bit.

For one say you have limited cooling, how low a voltage can your CPU run to lower heat ?

You don't have to actually overclock to find advantage in OC settings .....per say.

 

Why would you want to reboot your PC and go into your BIOS everytime you want to change profiles instead of 2.5 seconds to click something in windows? That's ridiculous.

I can have idle profiles, web surfing profiles/normal profiles, max power/performance/gaming profiles, switch between stock and overclocked and pretty much any custom CPU frequency, etc. etc. etc. all at the click of a button, even while in-game (alt-tab).

 

Thank you again homie unfortunately this wasn't a issue in my case.. I usually set everything in the bios when i do OC. Everything related to dynamic clocking, core management is off, even the cool and quite feature is off. There was just one option leaved untouched, called OC auto which does nothing when manual altering any cpu, mem related stuff but that i already had set to manual yesterday for safety reason because i tought it could have to do something with that rf2 indicates wrong cpu speeds, which was never the case until this build. The cpu is always on max clock speeds on all cores under windows, no matter which software i used to read it out, even rf2 reads it correct under the config menue from the launcher, just not in the sim. The energy profile in windows was and is as always on high performance. I'm not really up to date but usually i know a bit about this stuff and it was never an issue to configurate the hardware for max performance. I'm OC since the days where you had to build a bridge on the cpu to unlock multiplier and use watercooling since than, should be already more than 10 years. Howsoever unfortunately the issue with rf2 still remains.

 

You're welcome man, sorry to hear about the lingering issues.

 

I see what you did there

Good informative post.

 

Not just for power users though - watch the video

 

I have never used software or profiles to overclock, I don't play with settings.

Both my MSi P67 ( 5.1GHz / 5GHz stable on air ) and Z77 (5Ghz hydro )
I had bios dialed in and backed off 10%, all benches done and another fresh OS in 12 hours, never touched them again.

and this I said....

...nothing to do with bios just to clean cobwebs it takes like seconds.

My 2500K runs at 4.5GHz 24/7 temps at idle or small load are sweet.

What I will kill my CPU. omg !!


lol

 

would love to know how to over clock my 2600k but have no idea.

 

Very simple, tons of info. Actually PM me

 

CPU Performance / Windows Performance Plan ( Min/Max CPU Speed, Core Parking,...

I tested all the methods in this thread, but my system is still heavily bottlenecked by the CPU.

I got:
1100T BE @4.1 GHz
8GB ram @ 1.6 GHz
770 GTX OC

but in several condition I reach 100% occupancy on one core while the others are almost sleeping (eg. 100% on core 3, 50% on core 2, 5% on the remaining cores).

By reducing CPU clock I have proportional decrease in fps, so it is clearly the weak link...

Any suggestions?

 

CPU Performance / Windows Performance Plan ( Min/Max CPU Speed, Core Parking,...

Why in hell are my posts disappearing?!

 

Are you deleting them? lol

jk ofc

 

If I try to post something longer than two lines it disappears...

 

CPU Performance / Windows Performance Plan ( Min/Max CPU Speed, Core Parking,...

Now I can post for some mysterious reasons. I tried everything in this thread but I'm still heavily bottlenecked by my CPU.
AMD 1100T BE @ 4.0GHz
12Gb ram @ 1.6GHz
770 GTX OC

I have one core constantly @ 100% occupancy on some tracks while the others are almost sleeping beside another one @40-50% occupancy...

Maximum pre-rendered frames @1 as suggested.

Any ideas?

 

Whilst it sounds very likely that you are cpu bottlenecked then, can compare performance (using the live benchmark) with a lower cpu clock speed and see if performance changes and if so, how much by for how much downclocking.