Processor state?

I was looking in power options in my laptop and I saw there was a setting for maximum procesor state. What does this mean and what will happen to my computer if I make it higher?

 

In balanced mode when you are doing nothing with your computer, the processor stays at it's lowest power state to conserve energy and so it produces less, unneccesary heat.

When you do something, the processor ramps up to a higher speed.

Lets say you have a 2GHz processor, at idle it runs at 0.8GHz and when it needs it, it can ramp up to 1GHz, 1.6GHz and up to 2GHz.

Basically if you set maximum processor state to 50% the most it will go up to is 2GHz x 0.5, if it is 100% then the processor is allowed to ramp up to it's highest speed of 2GHz.

Minimum processor state is the lowest the processor will run at. In most cases, you should leave it at 5% so the processor can downclock to 800MHz (or whatever it's lowest speed is) when a higher speed is not needed.

 

Would playing games likes counter strike or doing multiple programs be recomeneded to have it 100%? Should I also keep it at 100%?

 

For games, I would set processor state min and max to 100%.
For general use (including multitasking) min to 5% and max to 100%.