Difference between Balanced and High Performance in gaming?

Hello guys,

I have just purchased a new laptop and started playing demanding games (Skyrim, Batman Arkham City..etc)

I am new and was wondering...

What difference in terms of performance is between "Balanced" or "High Performance" power plans?

Will I get better results while using the "H/P"plan (no lag, smother game..etc)?

p.s - I do not care for the battery life factor when playing games...

Appreciate the help

 

Just use balanced. Both Balanced and HP does not make much of a difference in performance but HP uses much more power.

 

Leave it at high performance even if it's plugged in. You can see the difference in the power settings, and these settings can be changed or tweaked. CPU utilization is the one you'll want to be concerned with. High performance uses 100% of it.

 

The Balanced power profile still allows the CPU to run at 100% when needed.

 

yes. I have just seen the difference in "advanced settings"

Min CPU usage: (Battery)
Balanced: 5% HP: 5%

Min CPU usage: (Plugged in)
Balanced: 5% HP: 100%

MAX all the same for both.

So what I concluded is that HP just rews the Laptop for no reason... (and it is a lot noisier ( i have to volume up to listen to games dialog) and warmer.

Gues Balanced It is.

 

HP plan is good for SSD speed. While on Normal power plan SSD will be slower unless you CPU is working on smth. likelistening music or else.

 

I use performance when plugged in. I have had performance issues with games using "balanced" or "HP recommended". For everything else balanced is fine.

 

My understanding has always been that Balanced offers the performance potential of High Performance without demanding it, whereas High Performance basically keeps the engine revved at all times, but it sounds like James D knows a bit more than I do with regards to how it affects the speed of an SSD.

Any chance of an explanation? I don't have my laptop at hand right now so I can't browse the options of the High Performance profile to figure out what it might be.

A question worth asking (that I don't have an answer to) is whether or not the higher minimum clocks of the High Performance profile will cause your CPU to put out more heat than the Balanced profile. Most games only use a limited amount of a decent CPU's power these days, so it's worth considering.

 

A lot of what it changes isn't user configurable. For instance going to power saving turns off Aero, but you don't have that option in power profile. That's only an example. There's other stuff that isn't user configurable.

 

simple regedit changes evvvvvrything

 

My power profile is simple; i use High Performance when Plugged in, Balanced when on battery.

Unless you worry about this bad boy, don't sweat it;

 

I'm using Balanced at all times.
No problems while playing games or using the CPU 100% (when there's need).
Think of it as a better power management option than performance when the latter is the same in games either way.

 

I can notice that my games are slower if I'm not using High performance.

 

Yeah, I see no reason to fiddle with Power Plans. I just have it set up so that my CPU can change power states from the lowest to the highest when necessary, even on battery. I've noticed no performance differences whatsoever between High Performance and Balanced in gaming or otherwise. My SSD benches the same as well.

 

I have balanced set when im on battery on my M18X. If the power-cord gets yanked by accident, my frame-rates drop by half.

 

I ran a Benchmark on "Batman Arkham Asylum" with High Performance and Balanced. The FPS is the same all the time...

As I was mentioning earlier.... High Performance seems to only make the laptop unnecessary reving. Laptop gets so damn loud that I need to turn volume up to listen to game dialogues.

My laptop
HP DV7 I7 2.2GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD 5400rpm

 

I thought we need to use hi performance for CPU intensive games.

I never game on battery power at any rate.

 

It is not a matter of gaming on battery.

Using H/P plan disables Intel Speedstep and makes the processor run at full speed. Which is more heat generated and power consumed.

Although it doesn't matter for older architectures,

With the latest processors having Boost/Turbo based on temperatures and TDP, you would not want to keep the processor at full (not turbo yet) speed. You can potentially get less turbo with H/P plan.

 

Yes, I meant the main benefit of using HP Recommended is longer battery life (especially if you tweak the plan settings for longer battery).

I think any quad-core laptop CPU since around three years ago or so uses turbo, so if you are not on battery, you won't get the full CPU speed for demanding apps or games unless you use the high performance setting.

On High Performance setting my battery only lasts about 60-90 minutes. On HP Recommended (with tweaks) it lasts much longer.

 

In case any of you are wondering, HP recommended is the balanced plan by HP for HP line of computers.

 

I don't even bother with High Performance, I have BatteryBar swap between Balanced and Power Saver if I'm on AC power or Battery... Although I've messed with a few of the options on both plans anyway. If I'm at home I'll set it to Balanced on battery anyway

High Performance just locks everything in a full power state. Generally it's not really needed, but there if you want to use it.

 

It doesn't lock everything at full power state, CPU still idles lower as does the GPU. SSD performance will most likely be better at performance vs balanced.

 

I always keep it on balanced, because when its on high performance the cpu clocks (in my case) stay at 2.0 GHz or above, which means more power consumption and heat being generated.

When it comes to games there wont be any difference because even if its on balanced it will still use all the power when needed.

 

This;

The CPU is like an engine in a car, the more load you put on it, the more power it will draw and utilize. It doesn't idle at full-speed or any nonsense like that.

The Power performance plans basically set throttle-stops to prevent the CPU,(via underclocking) and other components, from running at full speed. It also does things to save juice like dim the display, puts disks to sleep, turns off network radios, etc when idle.

High performance just keeps all of these services on all of the time or sets the idle threshold much higher.

Now, if you are seeing a drop in performance on Balanced, you probably have a profile from the PC manufacturer that throttles some components, like the GPU or the Bus. There are advanced options to go in and view all of these points. The most likely culprit is Intel's Dynamic FSB Frequency Switching, which will significantly lower bandwidth to Discreet GPUs. (Speed Step and Turbo Boost are two other intel power features that come into play too).

If you leave it plugged in the wall, might as well set the machine to be on High-Pref when plugged in. On Battery, then set something that is approritate for your use.

 

I think there are a few threads in this forum showing that balanced performed better than high performance, which seemed paradoxical.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

The way I have adjusted the plan settings, it's essentially like extreme "power saver" mode.

I use only two power plans. One for battery that throttles the CPU, dims the display, shuts down hard drive if I stop typing, etc., and a second power plan for gaming/running demanding apps on AC power that makes full use of the CPU turbo, etc.

When combined with the envy slice battery, the low power settings were the only way I could use the laptop for taking notes for more than a few hours.

As soon as I switch to high performance, my fan becomes loud and the system starts really working, the external metal casing becomes hot to the touch. I only use this mode when I'm plugged in to my Zalman laptop cooler and AC power.

 

I have had the power settings on every single gaming laptop that Ive owned to balanced and haven't experienced any problems at all. I see high performance mode as a complete waste of time and energy.

 

As far as I understand, if you only use the default "balanced" power plan, your Sager cannot make use of the enhanced processing power in your i7-2630QM's turbo setting.

You can manually change your balanced power plan to do this, or you can use the default high performance plan.

 

I keep it on balanced, but I've changed the settings so it basically throttles everything and dims the display on battery, and lets everything work at full power when plugged in. I wish they made a 9-cell battery for my laptop, though.

 

How long does your Y560 last on battery?

 

This is essentially the same as my setup, however I use two different power plans because on high performance my laptop gets very hot and the fan is quite loud, so I only use it when necessary for gaming or demanding apps.

 

I had already changed my default balanced profile to do that, only realised after checking it just now. Maybe that was the cause of some peoples CPU performance issues when in the balanced profile.

 

ive been on balanced ever since and ive had my 2630qm at 90%+ workloads on all 8 threads at 2.53 ghz per core while rendering through adobe media encoder or after effects.

ive also tested high and performance using 3dmark11 and i got a <20 point difference which is really nothing.

in my experience, balance has never held back the performance of this or any of my laptops.