Strange behavior Windows 11 Power Plan Directx12 Intel 12th gen

Discussion in 'Operating Systems' started by Phroster, May 31, 2023.

  1. Phroster

    Phroster Master Guru

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    On my system if I put the power plan on high performance, it results in heavy frametime spikes in directx12 games.
    If I put the power plan back on balanced I get the expected performance, without any frametime spikes.

    Just to be sure I tested this on a clean install of Windows 11.
    All drivers are up to date. (Motherboards, Audio, LAN, GPU)
    No overclocking except XMP profile.

    Afterall I'm glad it figured out the cause of my performance issues, but I'm wondering if anyone here has had the same behavior on their machine? And perhaps someone who might have some insight in what is causing this behavior.
     
  2. Donduck

    Donduck Master Guru

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  3. Phroster

    Phroster Master Guru

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    Would have to go through every setting one by one. Obviously something is different about balanced and high performance.
    Also watched some benchmarks, and it seems some games have much worse 1% lows on high performance mode.
    And apparently AMD recommends balanced for some CPUs.
     
  4. Donduck

    Donduck Master Guru

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    FYI, there are things beyond power plan, this is the order that Windows determines which power settings are applied:
    1. PPM profiles, queried by powercfg /queryprofile
    2. Overlays (power modes)
    3. balanced power plan
    Interesting fact: both Intel and AMD doesn't really know how to tune their CPU in Windows, they make stupid decisions in power settings deployment.
     

  5. Phroster

    Phroster Master Guru

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  6. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    thats because high performance disables the tiered capabilitys of the scheduler and makes the e-cores do the majority of the work.
     
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  7. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    I am not seeing anything in hidden power plan settings that would do something like that (settings and values between balanced an HP).

    Is this something hardcoded in the OS scheduler?

    Also I just moved from Win10 to Win11 with a 12600k and to me in Win10 workload goes to E cores, then gets handed to P cores very fast and parking seems to be more segmented between P and E cores.
    In Win11 I am not cores just seem to unpark randomly, you also lose control of many of the hidden power plan settings like you can't control P and E core parking separately.

    But I have not run into any stuttering and none in HP plans.
     
  8. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    anything other than Balanced in the legacy panel disables modern power management api's, which are interactive with hardware-driven power management.
     
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  9. Arinoki

    Arinoki Active Member

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    can u try this profile?
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fp_a4eMNFf7LGAwR_vYHGbkLY85HziRG/view?usp=sharing
     
  10. Phroster

    Phroster Master Guru

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    This just the hidden "Ultimate" power profile? I tried that and it doesn't change anything.

    TLDR this issue is solved, just put the power plan on balanced and power mode on best performance.

    PS: It really depends on the specific games you run, some run totally fine on high performance, but there are some DX12 titles that have severe stutter issues with it enabled.
     

  11. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    Ok, for a quick an dirty test I ran prime95 with only 8 thread workload to see if I saw a big diff between power plans with regard to P vers E cores, this is on a 12600k (6-P, 4-E)
    In this limited test I didn't see any of power plans (balanced, HP etc) hit E cores much at all, most of time was only P cores. If I raise thread count I do see some hitting E but that was same for balanced.

    Now this is only one workload and I am sure it depends on app run.
     
  12. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    It's very obvious with some background tasks with high CPU load, like RAM tests or Steam 1Gbit/s downloads. They wreck performance in games with legacy high performance energy plan, whereas balanced reserves the p-core for foreground apps like games which then can continue to run well. Kinda cool black magic.
     
  13. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    Ok, thanks for feedback.
    After I posted my comment I think my test was not good as it is not considered background by any means.
     
  14. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    it's not going to affect applications that pin by threadmasks, such as prime95.
     
  15. Donduck

    Donduck Master Guru

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    Power scheme personality is just a tag for power plans, but still there are some new thing that can only be configured for balanced power scheme personality.
    Not true, Intel and AMD still configure settings for high performance and power saver plans. Only thing is balanced has extra features such as QoS levels or game mode etc.
    By "modern power management" and "hardware-driven power management", I think you mean CPPC/HWP/speed shift/autonomous mode etc., Windows 10 and 11 does control EPP values and utilize other hardware features such as thread director on all power plans.

    There is a lot going on behind power plans, people are testing over and over again without knowing what Windows is really doing behind the screen, here is the tutorial explaining how did Intel and AMD configure power settings beyond power plan. There isn't any myth, just not a lot people know how to do this.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2023

  16. X7007

    X7007 Ancient Guru

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    What we want to use is the Windows Power window at Balanced and the Control Panel Power Management at Balanced also for the 12th. because when I put Best Performance it screwed everything up. E-cores would drop down to 400mhz at idle and causing massive DPC and freezes and no matter what I put on Control Panel PM it wouldn't change the Core clocks, they would all still drop down to 400mhz at idle even Ultimate and High-performance profiles selected. you don't want to change the Windows Settings power with Balanced I get proper clocks for E-cores at Idle so the system doesn't freeze because of so many delays and core changes only P-cores drop down beyond 3Ghz. that's how it should be on Balanced Balanced

    upload_2023-8-3_1-3-32.png
     
  17. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    I am trying to follow you but not sure I understand your above comments.
    For me balanced idles clock the same no matter if I set "best performance or best efficiency"
    So for me with 12600k is idle 500mhz on P and E cores 600mhz.( but P cores avg closer to 600mhz)

    Now with HP plan the clocks stay close to max most of time (P= 4700mhz and E cores 3800).

    Anyway, there two settings that affect idle and clock scaling/boost.

    Use PowerSettingExplorer and look for "Minimum processor state" and "Minimum processor state for Processor Power Efficiency Class 1"
    You can try settings in 30-50% range as a start.

    This setting too.
    "Processor energy performance preference policy" and "Processor energy performance preference policy for Processor Power Efficiency Class 1", balanced defaults are 33, lower favors performance (HP=0).

    I would make a copy of the balanced plan and edit that one how you like and the "best performance" and "best efficiency" still work as the plan is balanced based.
     

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