Question Performance & Energy Slider Win10 Ryzen 5000

lolokaa

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May 4, 2019
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Hi, I was wondering what the exact function of the slider is, and while it's not easy to find exhaustive information on it, I noticed something with my testing recently.
(Win 10 21H2 - Ryzen 5900X - Stock configuration, limit set to Motherboard in BIOS - X570 Unify - Chipset ver. 4.08.09.2337 latest - Balanced (recommended) power plan)

By default, the slider is set to the middle 'Better performance'. On this setting, my CPU Core Voltage never downclocks below 1.394V, and peaks randomly at 1.487V even in idle. The same is the case for the 'Best performance' option (slider set far right). But when I set the slider to the far left, 'Best energy savings' the CPU instantly downclocks to 0.975V and still peaks at 1.487V during load and as necessary.
As far as I can tell, there has been no negative impact on performance with 'Best energy savings', although the three options basically should differ in a variety of underlying settings. Thoughts?
 

freercurse

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Dec 16, 2016
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microsofts spaghetti code perhaps, they cba to remove it for desktop config, really for laptop config.
or to reduce idle and low load power comsumption, if running on portable batteries or expensive electricity?
 
There's a few (maybe a lot) of hidden options in Windows' power plan management that affect things like how aggressively the OS should tell the CPU to boost, if it should park cores, etc. On one hand, I get why they made these options hidden (it's more options for the average person to see, who may not know what they do). On the other... well I would say "give me those options!" but Microsoft has already struggled with this problem for years.

So it's probably tweaking those in the background.
 
Hi, I was wondering what the exact function of the slider is, and while it's not easy to find exhaustive information on it, I noticed something with my testing recently.
(Win 10 21H2 - Ryzen 5900X - Stock configuration, limit set to Motherboard in BIOS - X570 Unify - Chipset ver. 4.08.09.2337 latest - Balanced (recommended) power plan)

By default, the slider is set to the middle 'Better performance'. On this setting, my CPU Core Voltage never downclocks below 1.394V, and peaks randomly at 1.487V even in idle. The same is the case for the 'Best performance' option (slider set far right). But when I set the slider to the far left, 'Best energy savings' the CPU instantly downclocks to 0.975V and still peaks at 1.487V during load and as necessary.
As far as I can tell, there has been no negative impact on performance with 'Best energy savings', although the three options basically should differ in a variety of underlying settings. Thoughts?
I think it toggles various power plan settings for things like CPU idle clock speed and how eagerly the CPU boosts and maybe a few other things. These settings aren't exposed to us on the Power Plan menu.

What I noticed is on BALANCED my 5800X cores idle (or the lowest clock speed before dropping into C6 deep sleep) at 3600Mhz while on BEST POWER EFFICIENCY they idle at 3375Mhz and at BEST PERFORMANCE at 3775Mhz. That seems to line up with the voltage differences.
 
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