FIX for Win7 i7 sluggish performance

Mr Pras · 05-25-2010, 09:47 AM

Hi Everyone

I just found a great fix to stop win7 parking the cores when Idle.

This is an aggressive power saving approach which makes the system feel sluggish and underpowered..

I've just tried it and my system really feels snappier, although I haven't tried any benches. Try it for yourself and see!

from:
UltimateComputers.net Forum - View topic - Disable Core Parking Windows 7 Tweak may improve performance

Who is affected
It only applies to Windows 7 X64 and X32 and only in systems using more than 2 physicial CPU's and/or more than 2 "logical" cores - ie: Core i7's.

The Problem
See here for a bit of info / explanation / more info about CPU Core Parking - Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2: Core Parking / Intelligent Timer Tick / Timer Coalescing - Ask the Performance Team - Home - TechNet Blogs

Core Parking is a feature of Windows 7 that is causing rare performance problems. I don't notice it on my home i7 / Win7 system but some people are getting microstutters and odd behavior in certain programs. Without the following " tweak" you may see CPU spiking in your programs and Windows Task Manager - some CPU cores will be "turned off" / "parked" depending on load and they will be dynamically turned on or off and dynamically loaded up or down as the system deems necessary - the scope for glitchs / pops / clicks / droputs etc.... in such an environment is simply enormous. To the best of my knowledge, there is no known "switch" to turn it off - no utility I am aware of to "tweak" it off.

The Fix
- Go to Regedit
- Select Edit > Find... and find this key: " 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583 "
UPDATE: Try searching instead for "Specify the minimum number of unparked cores/packages allowed (in percentage)." (WITHOUT QUOTES)
- Within this key, there is a value called: " ValueMax " This value represents the % number of cores the system will park
- Change the value of " ValueMax" to 0 so that, it matches " ValueMin "
- You will have to find the key a few times and repeat the process for each time it is found - the number of instances will depend on the number of power profiles in your system. To do this go back up to Edit > Find Next. (I had 3 instances of this key in my registry.)
- Do a full shutdown and power-off and cold-re-start.

This seems to work better.[/color]

Achilleus · 05-25-2010, 09:51 AM

Is this going to keep turbo boost from kicking in?

Mr Pras · 05-25-2010, 09:51 AM

No, it's only stopping win7 from parking the idle cores (which makes them sluggish to respond).

It is making the benches run slightly higher. The mouse pointer actually moves at full frame rate too. Before it would sluggishly refresh every few frames, now it actually seems to be acting like a high performance machine.. Woohoo!

madpenguin92 · 05-25-2010, 09:55 AM

the fix stops the touchpad from lagging?!?!

granyte · 05-25-2010, 09:55 AM

intel seem to have a lot of trouble with thier throteling tubo boost and etc feature since the core architecture -.-

lucky for us most of the time only disabeling thoses feature solve the problem

Mr Pras · 05-25-2010, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by madpenguin92

the fix stops the touchpad from lagging?!?!

Er, it might but I doubt it..

It's to do with CPU core-parking guys.. It stops the machine being sluggish because of the way it shifts around threads and also parks cores.. Now, it doesn't park cores so the switching threads activity doesn't slow the machine down. Something like that.

hitokiri1 · 05-25-2010, 09:56 AM

Anyone else want to test this out?

Mr Pras · 05-25-2010, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by granyte

intel seem to have a lot of trouble with thier throteling tubo boost and etc feature since the core architecture -.-

lucky for us most of the time only disabeling thoses feature solve the problem

This has fixed it for me, now getting proper performance and responsiveness with EIST and Turbo still enabled.. Definitely an improvement!

madpenguin92 · 05-25-2010, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Pras

The mouse pointer actually moves at full frame rate too. Before it would sluggishly refresh every few frames, now it actually seems to be acting like a high performance machine.. Woohoo!

i read that as a fix for the touchpad...my bad