Power Plan Controversy

[jpzsports]

UPDATE 8/2010: I wanted to bump this post for those who haven't seen this before. These tests still apply for Windows 7 as they did for Vista. Basically, setting your power plan to Balanced is better than High Performance 99% of the time


Since my laptop is 99% of the time plugged in, I have had my power plan set to High Performance since the beginning. Recently I was doing a little research regarding the 3 standard power plans, and have found some interesting results.

First, here is a basic description of the 3 power plans:

* Balanced: Offers as much power as the laptop PC can deliver during periods of activity but significantly reduces power consumption during idle periods.
* Power saver: Saves power by reducing system performance whenever possible. Use this setting if you want to squeeze as much life out of your battery as possible.
* High performance: Maximizes system performance and responsiveness to user input. Battery life can be reduced by as much as 50 percent from Balanced values when the PC uses this power scheme while running on battery power.

Like most people know, to get the best battery life switch to Power Saver (or create a custom plan).
And if you want to be in the middle between performance and battery life, switch to Balanced.
And to get the best performance, most assume that High Performance is best.
That's what I thought too, but according to some tests, this isn't necessarily true.

According to Jenn K. Lee from pocketables.net, her benchmarks showed that Balanced may be better than High Performance. But how could this be?

Here's her CrystalMark 2004R3 benchmark tests on an HTC Shift X9500:

Balanced Power Plan:


Power Saver Power Plan:


High Performance Power Plan:



According to this test, Balanced beats out High Performance.
----
Then she ran the same test on a Sony Vaio TZ170N.
Here's the results:




Once again, Balanced beats out High Performance.

For those interested, here are the links to her tests:
1. http://www.pocketables.net/2008/05/htc-shift-power.html
2. http://www.pocketables.net/2008/05/sony-vaio-tz-po.html



So if these tests are correct, we should be using Balanced over High Performance because we would get better performance and save power as well. I'm still skeptical though.

Some people think there is a flaw in CrystalMark2004R3, so maybe so other forum members here can run their own benchmarks and see if these test results are accurate or not.

So I hope this information helps, and feel free to post your own findings and tests. I will edit this post if I find any new info.

EDIT: Some more recent tests have shown a less than 2% difference between "Balanced" and "High Performance." So even if Balanced is not necessarily better performance than High Performance, it still is probably the better power plan to choose because you save power without any performance loss.
Note: The dots in the Windows Vista Power Options are misleading because it shows Balanced as half the performance of "High Performance". This is inaccurate. In Windows 7, these dots are no longer shown.

Tests are still be conducted so more info on the way


Consensus so far: Balanced is the best choice. It has basically the same performance of "High Performance" while also conserving power thus leading to a cooler computer.

[davepermen]

balanced is just as fast as high performance, and due to the throttling down while idling, it may let your system cool down more. this might gain your performance on core i7 systems that can autoclock.

that's just one idea.

but one thing is quite logical: high performance is for the ones that want "high performance". but just because they like to read the word. balanced gets the SAME performance when needed. it just trothles down when not needed. and this is a GOOD thing. better cooling, more silent fans, more batterylife.

balanced > high performance.



edit: and btw, those profiles are not "magic". they are 100% editable, and documented. so you can reconfigure them to what ever needs you have (i do so), and maybe find out whats the difference there, in their settings.

[jpzsports]

balanced is just as fast as high performance, and due to the throttling down while idling, it may let your system cool down more. this might gain your performance on core i7 systems that can autoclock.

that's just one idea.

but one thing is quite logical: high performance is for the ones that want "high performance". but just because they like to read the word. balanced gets the SAME performance when needed. it just trothles down when not needed. and this is a GOOD thing. better cooling, more silent fans, more batterylife.

balanced > high performance.



edit: and btw, those profiles are not "magic". they are 100% editable, and documented. so you can reconfigure them to what ever needs you have (i do so), and maybe find out whats the difference there, in their settings.

I agree that Balanced makes more sense. Many people have set their Power Plan to High Performance without giving it much thought, so hopefully this thread will help people see that High performance may not be best.

[davepermen]

i guess that's why high performance got hidden away in win7 because only balanced and energy saving are the ones that normal people ever should need.

[fonduekid]

This is informative and useful. Thanks a lot.

[DarkSilver]

It is informative.
I always want the laptop to perform as fast as it capable all the time.
So, I used RMClock. To make it run at highest FID and lowest VID(without BSOD) all the time. It works better than "High performance" in the Control Panel Power Option. Save electricity(battery last longer due to lowest VID) with highest speed(max FID).
I never trust build-in Power Option in the Control Panel.

[jpzsports]

This is informative and useful. Thanks a lot.

Glad to help


Just wondering...I know that the Balanced plan throttles the CPU when it's not needed at max performance, but does it also affect the GPU at all?

And I'm also still wondering why Balanced would result in better performance than High performance. Even if they were equal, that would be a good enough reason for people to rethink their current setting and switch to Balanced. But better yet I suppose, Balanced is actually even better at achieving Max performance..? Very interesting. I'll probably run some of my own tests to compare to the ones I already listed. This is a very interesting debate.
Plus I wonder how power plans like HP recommended compare to balanced...

[fonduekid]

Glad to help


Just wondering...I know that the Balanced plan throttles the CPU when it's not needed at max performance, but does it also affect the GPU at all?

A bit old, but give it a look.

Edit: Oopps, sorry, forgot the link Anyway, here it is: http://tekvax.com/dan/?q=node/14

[jpzsports]

More information I found that may be useful to this whole investigation.

These are the details of each power plan:

Power Plan — Balanced (Set as active plan by default)

* Require password on: Yes
* Turn off hard disks after: 20 minutes
* Wireless adapter settings — Power Saving Mode: Maximum Performance
* Sleep — Sleep after: 60 minutes
* Sleep — Hibernate after: Never
* USB Settings — USB Selective suspend setting: Disabled
* Power button action: Shut Down
* Start menu power button action: Sleep
* PCI Express — Link State Power Management: Moderate power savings
* Processor Power Management — Minimum Processor State — 5%
* Processor Power Management — Maximum Processor State — 100%
* Search and Indexing — Power savings mode: High Performance.
* Turn off the display: 20 minutes
* Adaptive display: On
* Multimedia settings — When sharing media: Prevent idling to sleep

Power Plan — Power Saver

* Require password on: Yes
* Turn off hard disks after: 20 minutes
* Wireless adapter settings — Power Saving Mode: Maximum Performance
* Sleep — Sleep after: 60 minutes
* Sleep — Hibernate after: Never
* USB Settings — USB Selective suspend setting: Disabled
* Power button action: Shut Down
* Start menu power button action: Sleep
* PCI Express — Link State Power Management: Maximum power savings
* Processor Power Management — Minimum Processor State — 5%
* Processor Power Management — Maximum Processor State — 50%
* Search and Indexing — Power savings mode: High Performance.
* Turn off the display: 20 minutes
* Adaptive display: On
* Multimedia settings — When sharing media: Prevent idling to sleep

Power Plan — High Performance

* Require password on: Yes
* Turn off hard disks after: 20 minutes
* Wireless adapter settings — Power Saving Mode: Maximum Performance
* Sleep — Sleep after: Never
* Sleep — Hibernate after: Never
* USB Settings — USB Selective suspend setting: Disabled
* Power button action: Shut Down
* Start menu power button action: Sleep
* PCI Express — Link State Power Management: Off
* Processor Power Management — Minimum Processor State — 100%
* Processor Power Management — Maximum Processor State — 100%
* Search and Indexing — Power savings mode: High Performance.
* Turn off the display: 20 minutes
* Adaptive display: Off
* Multimedia settings — When sharing media: Allow the computer to enter Away Mode

Source: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?...nVista_default


And here is a good description for each settings from http://www.thehotfix.net/forums/inde...for-notebooks/

Descriptions of each setting:

Require a password on wakeup: This setting is pretty self explanatory. If you enable it, Windows will prompt you for your password when you resume the computer from sleep or hibernation. If you disable it, Windows will not prompt you and instead will resume directly to the desktop.

Hard disk settings: This setting allows you to control the amount of time that passes before your computer turns your hard disk off or spins the disk down to a low power state.

Wireless adapter settings: If your computer has a wireless network adapter, this option will allow you to control how much power it consumes. On a "low power savings" mode, your wireless adapter will consume more power and you will get greater performance."Maximum power savings" will allow you to save more power at the cost of network performance.

Sleep: Self explanatory - this allows you to select the amount of time that passes before the notebook puts itself into a low power sleep state.

Allow hybrid sleep: This setting allows you to control the new hybrid sleep function in Windows Vista. This new sleep mode is a combination of both hibernation and sleep, where your machine is powered down to a low power state and the contents of your memory are still in RAM as well as saved to the hard drive. In the event of a power outage while in sleep mode, this will save your behind. But on notebook computers it is recommended to have this set to off. Why? Simple. Notebooks have batteries, and even if the battery drops down to a critical level while in sleep mode, Windows will save the contents of your memory to disk and power off your system. The only reason you would want to have hybrid sleep on in a notebook is if your battery is prone to falling out, or in the case of some Dell notebooks, exploding (although then your machine won't be powering back on anyway).

Hibernate after: This setting controls the amount of time that passes before the system saves the contents of your memory to disk and powers the system off (therefore saving battery power).

USB selective suspend setting: Powers down unused USB ports after a set period of time. On some notebooks with built-in webcams, this can cause issues with being able to use the camera after resuming from a sleep state. Please check with your notebook manufacturer for updated drivers and information.

Power buttons and lid: Again, this one is pretty self explanitory. The options listed allow you to control what closing the lid on the notebook does, change the default action for the physical power button on the computer itself, and the default action for the Start Menu power button.

PCI Express Link State Power Management: Allows the computer to control how much power is dedicated to the PCI Express bus at any given time. This is especially important if you have a high-end gaming graphics card in your notebook such as a mobile NVIDIA GeForce 8700.

Processor power management settings: Throttles your computer to a certain percentage when running on battery or on AC power. Great for saving power on the road if you aren't going to be running any intensive applications. NOTE: This setting does not always scale to the percentage you choose, especially on certain Intel based processors that can only step down their clock speed by multiplier. In this case, your most likely going to see your processor throttled at 50% even if you select a lower percentage.

Search and Indexing settings: Controls how much CPU time the Windows Search service is allowed to consume. To keep the index up to date, Windows must crawl through files in order to inspect their contents and uses a percentage of your processor cycles. If you are running on battery power, it is recommended to use "Balanced" or "Power saver" to save a few extra minutes on your battery life. For AC power, I recommend using "High Performance" as this allows the indexer to update the search index in almost real-time.

Display settings: Allows you to control the timeout period before the display powers down, and allows you to control the brightness of the display. If you are working in an area where you can see your display fine on a low backlight level it is highly recommended as this will save you some time on your battery.

Multimedia settings: If your notebook is set up as a Windows Media Center or sharing files over the network through the Windows Media Network Sharing Service, you can prevent the computer from idling to sleep (for instance, you are not actively at the computer and you are streaming media to another computer in the home). By doing so, you can make sure that your media experience will not be interrupted. It is recommended that when you are using battery power to allow the computer to sleep, because otherwise your battery could drain to 0% and if Windows does not get a chance to hibernate you may lose any un-saved work.

Battery settings: Self explanitory. These settings allow you to control when you would like to be notified that your battery is at a low or critical level, and allows you to control what Windows will do in a low battery situation (such as sleep or hibernate).

If you find that your display is too dim, adjust the "Display brightness" settings to your personal preference.

EDIT:

A bit old, but give it a look.

Edit: Oopps, sorry, forgot the link Anyway, here it is: http://tekvax.com/dan/?q=node/14

Thanks for the link. From what I've read, it seems that just the CPU is throttled, and the GPU is not affected.

[Charles P. Jefferies]

I would like to see the tests conducted with a series of different benchmarks; I don't think we can go off of one benchmark.

I'll try PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage on the machine I'm testing at the moment and report back later. The results could be interesting.