The real effect of the Thermal Control Strategies "Silent Mode", "Balanced Mode" and "Performance Mode" in Vaio Control Center

Ok... so what is the deal with those settings!? I have always wondered what effect they actually have, on what and whether any effect at all or just Placebo!??



I have tried all 3 of them and never did I feel ANY difference in the FAN behavior, temperature or whatsoever... I always assumed they somehow change or limit the states of the CPU to be able to control heat dissipation.

Well in order to prove that I spent some time yesterday trying to benchmark the CPU and compare the results of the 3 modes...
For that purpose, I used the "Passmark Performance Test".

I ran 2 sets of 5 runs each using the "CPU --> All tests" option for each of the modes. Here are the average results for each mode:

Silent Mode: First set average = 2642,54
Balanced Mode: First set average = 2645,06
Performance Mode First set average = 2650,8

Silent Mode: Second set average = 2647,16
Balanced Mode: Second set average = 2651,32
Performance Mode Second set average = 2646,6

Based on those results, I say the modes have absolutely no impact on the productivity of the CPU which makes me even more certain those modes (at least for some VAIOs like mine) are just air under pressure and are not linked to any actions!!

What do you think? Am I missing something!?

 

Here is a thread you may be interested in. It addresses Performance, Balanced, and Power Saver Modes - not Silent. I haven't tested any of this myself. http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/410831-power-plan-controversy.html

Edit: I can say that as far as Silent Mode goes, on the F, it does reduce the fan speed/noise somewhat. It is supposed to do this by reducing CPU utilization. It does not get rid of the noise at all - silent is a misnomer - but it does have a noticeable effect.

 

It simply sets the thermal strategy, NOT the cpu clock.

If you set it to silent, the fan will not be allowed to hit max speed and the CPU/GPU will start to very noticably throttle if you load it for an extended period of time.

If you set it to balanced, the fan will hit max speed, but at a higher temp than....

If you set to performance, the fan fill hit max speed at a lower cpu/gpu temp threshhold.

 

I'm aware of this thread, but it is regarding the Windows modes, which I am not really sure are directly connected to the thermal strategy modes in Vaio Control Center...

I might experiment with the windows settings to see if they somehow affect the CPU performance, but what I am more interested in are the Vaio settings...

If this was true why does it not have any impact on the CPU performance? Benchmarking forces the CPU to work at 100% (both cores) ... obviously it is not throttled down because of lack of cooling or any other reason while using the "Silent mode" and to be honest I did not hear any difference in the FAN noise...

And if you suspect the benchmarking tests are not long enough to get the CPU hot enough, pay attention that those 30 (!) runs were performed one after each other, so the second set of 5 tests with "Silent Mode" was performed right after 15 (!) runs of benchmarking.... if that does not heat up the CPU what does...

 

Maybe your model is different or you have wrong sony notebook utilities installed but it definitely works on some models, like our Z's. Try gaming for a while set to silent. Our Z's will throttle and freeze like mad, maybe yours will to?

 

Not really a gamer but if you give me a specific example (game and so on) I could try it.
The utility is the original one, so it is absolutely right.

If the modes have some influence over the GPU behavior - I haven't tested that, but it certainly looks as if they have no impact on the CPU as visible from the results...

 

^They impact both the CPU and the GPU, at least on Z's.

Any cpu/gpu intensive game, starcraft, WOW, Battlefield, MW2...etc. When set to silent the fan never hits high speed and the games throttle every couple seconds.

Run prime95 on a real torture test if you just want to test cpu. Many cpu benchmarks don't generate much load on the cpu, I can't speak for Passmark as I'm not familiar with it.

 

For temp control balanced mode seems to be the best profile for me to use when plugged in.

Also, for me using silent mode on batery power vastly improved my battery life than compared to using the balanced mode. This is though a laptop with an integrated gpu.

 

Seems to me that those settings are only applicable on some models... I feel 0 difference between the modes.

Maybe one of oyu could also benchmark the CPU for each mode and upload the results... In order to keep the PC more silent, which would mean to decrease temperatures and increase battery life, the setting would have to limit something. And if it is not the CPU than it could only be the GPU. But something needs to be limited... it cannot "magically" reduce temperatures, noise and power consumption.

 

The silent profile only throttles when your fan has hit max speed and you've decided to continue working your GPU/CPU. In any case, its just you telling your Vaio to be quiet, and in doing so, it tells you that you can't do that much. I always forget to turn it back to balanced/power saver after i flick it onto silent... and it sucks because then i start gaming and my normally 45fps drops to 26fps and it takes me a while before i remember that i turned it to silent mode.

 

I will benchmark the GPU then - as stated already, at least on Vaio S it has absolutely no affect on the CPU, no matter what state the FAN is in - you can imagine that after 15 benchmarking runs at 100% CPU load it gets as hot as it could ever get... and still no difference in productivity. And not that I paid extra attention as the FAN is quite silent even if on max speed, but I don't think it limits the fan in any way either.

I can imagine that by Z it could somehow limit the usage of the dedicated GPU and forcing the integrated to be used.... S however is no hybrid - it is either-or (mine is with dedicated NVIDIA).

I will present the results of the GPU benchmarking soon

 

Has anyone figured out a way to make this setting switch automatically when moving from battery to mains power?

I'd like to use silent mode when I'm on battery, when I'm hardly ever doing anything very processor-intensive and the laptop is near to me, and balanced mode when it's plugged in as it's almost always in the dock and further away from me, and so the fan noise is less noticeable.

 

The key for this is again first figuring out what exactly those settings do and how!! You have automatically switchable power profiles in windows... so you can set them any way you want. The question is - what do the Vaio Control Center settings alter and how! If you know that (and it is supported by windows) you can always create custom profile there.

 

Joining this talk late, but i don't think you'll see anything important on benchmarking. Try stress tests instead. For example, when i overclock my gpu, the driver doesn't crash until after hours me gameplay. You need to see how there settings affect your computer while under extended heavy load. Say 15 to 20 min each

 

Guys maybe I'm noob at this but after readin this I can't even find the option to change the thermal option in my vaio control panel, and I only got my vaio z recently. Only way I can change this is to assign the vaio s button in the control panel options to thermal control and so when I press it it changes the fan mode and quiet drastically..benchmarking wise did a few tests.. Nothing dramatic worth mentioning it's only after 30 to 40 min of extremely heavy gameplay where normally game would crash it extended it a bit longer.. That's for me though anyway

 

What I suppose after using the different modes and Intel Turboboost monitor is :

- Silent mode tries to lower frequency and voltages to reduce fan speed using strong throttle (Causes lags in games as said before. Seems to work like Nvidia's 580 GTX: to lower temp faster, frequency fall instead of increasing fan speed at reaching a critical thermal point). So fan speed get increased only if frequency cannot be lowered due to the charge.

- Performance mode gives priority to frequency providing high cooling performances. The fan increases speed higher to keep good temp without decreasing frequency and voltage.

- So I suppose balanced mode uses both fan and frequency throttle at the same time: the fan will get increased speed as frequency increases too. I don't know if this setting impacts on games as silent mode.

Would be interesting to try different modes under heavy benchmarks while watching frequency, voltage and fan RPM. What I'm sure is VAIO CC is prior to windows power settings, probably because windows cannot control fan RPM (Sony controls it by hardware). Moreover, I don't know if the Geforce is also watched by this power system (Would explain lags in game while no differences in CPU benchs).

I hope it is all clear (Not from USA, English is hard for me... doing my best ). Warning, this is all theory, I did not perform real tests.

 

So I just tried watching the latest F1 race edit on the F1.com website on my Vaio Z12 with the GPU in speed setting (as I'm outputting to my DVI monitor).

The video, which uses Flash, is approximately three minutes long and is in 1920x1080 resolution. With the Vaio control center in balanced mode, video playback consumed about 40% CPU (i7) and was smooth with no dropped frames, but at the end of it the fan was making a fair old noise (although as usual it slowed down within a few seconds of the video ending)

I switched to 'silent' mode and replayed the video. The video now played smoothly for about 5 seconds before dropping down to about 10fps (i.e. very jerkily with lots of dropped frames) and CPU usage was now pegged at 100%. However, at the end of playback the fan was still pretty much at normal idle speed.

So I don't think you need to be using high CPU/GPU levels for any significant time to see a significant reduction in performance when in silent mode -- it will show itself almost instantly (within 5 seconds of high processor demand for me). However, in this case I'm not sure whether the GPU or the CPU was doing the majority of the decoding work, and hence whether one was being throttled more than another.

 

This is how it works. In silent mode, the fans absolutely will not be allowed to spin past low speed. Depending on your power profile the CPU may still be set to run at full speed. So what happens is, you get in a loop of throttling when the machine heats up.

 

And some CPU-only benchmarking, using Prime95's benchmark tool which runs for about 4 minutes. I've only included a subset of the output:

Silent mode:
Timing FFTs using 4 threads on 2 physical CPUs.
Best time for 768K FFT length: 18.036 ms., avg: 39.911 ms.
Best time for 896K FFT length: 18.868 ms., avg: 24.601 ms.
Best time for 1024K FFT length: 22.262 ms., avg: 39.865 ms.
Best time for 1280K FFT length: 37.667 ms., avg: 53.653 ms.
Best time for 1536K FFT length: 35.325 ms., avg: 47.778 ms.
Best time for 1792K FFT length: 40.850 ms., avg: 58.328 ms.
Best time for 2048K FFT length: 45.077 ms., avg: 60.842 ms.
Best time for 2560K FFT length: 75.630 ms., avg: 86.020 ms.
Best time for 3072K FFT length: 80.173 ms., avg: 93.701 ms.
Best time for 3584K FFT length: 95.433 ms., avg: 110.237 ms.
Best time for 4096K FFT length: 112.232 ms., avg: 125.705 ms.
Best time for 5120K FFT length: 139.353 ms., avg: 214.660 ms.
Best time for 6144K FFT length: 145.964 ms., avg: 164.786 ms.
Best time for 7168K FFT length: 182.357 ms., avg: 202.256 ms.
Best time for 8192K FFT length: 201.164 ms., avg: 239.055 ms.

Balanced mode:
Timing FFTs using 4 threads on 2 physical CPUs.
Best time for 768K FFT length: 6.914 ms., avg: 10.166 ms.
Best time for 896K FFT length: 7.491 ms., avg: 12.020 ms.
Best time for 1024K FFT length: 9.497 ms., avg: 21.183 ms.
Best time for 1280K FFT length: 12.012 ms., avg: 25.124 ms.
Best time for 1536K FFT length: 17.281 ms., avg: 20.973 ms.
Best time for 1792K FFT length: 19.056 ms., avg: 22.148 ms.
Best time for 2048K FFT length: 23.551 ms., avg: 29.284 ms.
Best time for 2560K FFT length: 31.384 ms., avg: 35.660 ms.
Best time for 3072K FFT length: 38.803 ms., avg: 41.533 ms.
Best time for 3584K FFT length: 44.762 ms., avg: 47.949 ms.
Best time for 4096K FFT length: 52.800 ms., avg: 60.082 ms.
Best time for 5120K FFT length: 74.456 ms., avg: 78.707 ms.
Best time for 6144K FFT length: 83.795 ms., avg: 89.159 ms.
Best time for 7168K FFT length: 111.789 ms., avg: 119.116 ms.
Best time for 8192K FFT length: 116.070 ms., avg: 122.216 ms.

Performance mode:
Timing FFTs using 4 threads on 2 physical CPUs.
Best time for 768K FFT length: 6.923 ms., avg: 10.893 ms.
Best time for 896K FFT length: 7.625 ms., avg: 11.333 ms.
Best time for 1024K FFT length: 9.640 ms., avg: 14.733 ms.
Best time for 1280K FFT length: 12.319 ms., avg: 18.144 ms.
Best time for 1536K FFT length: 17.929 ms., avg: 20.910 ms.
Best time for 1792K FFT length: 19.057 ms., avg: 21.880 ms.
Best time for 2048K FFT length: 23.908 ms., avg: 28.127 ms.
Best time for 2560K FFT length: 31.411 ms., avg: 183.483 ms.
Best time for 3072K FFT length: 54.914 ms., avg: 65.893 ms.
Best time for 3584K FFT length: 45.096 ms., avg: 49.796 ms.
Best time for 4096K FFT length: 50.917 ms., avg: 58.428 ms.
Best time for 5120K FFT length: 67.860 ms., avg: 74.135 ms.
Best time for 6144K FFT length: 81.169 ms., avg: 91.601 ms.
Best time for 7168K FFT length: 107.355 ms., avg: 120.157 ms.
Best time for 8192K FFT length: 110.865 ms., avg: 118.110 ms.

This suggests that the CPU performance when using all cores is between two and three times slower in silent mode than it is in balanced mode. While there is an apparent improvement in CPU performance when switching from balanced to performance mode, the improvement is very minimal and may even be in the margin of error.

I suspect that even in performance mode the CPU still needs to be throttled occasionally to prevent overheating, as shown by the blip in average times half-way through the performance run.

Note that I could detect no difference in fan speed between the balanced and performance mode runs.

 

Following on, I started to play with the 'processor power management' settings in the standard Windows 7 power options (Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change plan settings -> Change advanced settings -> Processor Power State)

By changing the maximum power state from 100% to 40% I was able to almost exactly replicate the above benchmark times. The fan also behaved in exactly the same manner as in the Vaio 'silent' mode, barely increasing in volume from the idle fan volume.

Personally I suspect that the setting in the Vaio control panel is doing something similar to the Windows setting, but for hard-coded values.

As doing it through Windows both allows for more granularity and the ability to set different limits depending on whether the laptop is plugged in or not, I'm happy with the outcome, for me -- I can now run the laptop at full speed when plugged in, and throttle it down to a silent (and more battery-efficient) setting when it's unplugged, without having to change any options manually.

 

Obviously this "rule" does not apply to all models! As I said I feel absolutely no difference between the 3 modes - neither performance-wise, nor noise-wise...
The only thing I can't really say about is GPU as I haven't yet benchmarked it and rarely use any GPU intensive software, apart from Photoshop.

The FAN does switch speeds in silent mode too and I'm pretty sure it does as well reach the max possible speed if needed.

 

^Must not be working properly on your system, or maybe the VPCS in general. Wouldn't be the first time they left a setting in vaio control center that didn't do anything Or maybe the thermals are good enough on your S that you need to load both the GPU and the CPU to get the temps higher than the fan on low speed can handle. Or perhaps the benchmark you are running isn't causing enough load. Dunno.

 

I think 100% CPU load on all cores is pretty much enough

But as I said - the FAN does switch to higher speeds in silent too... just like in every other mode.

I'm not exactly complaining as the laptop is really silent no matter what and no matter on which FAN speed (compared to many other machines I've used) so it doesn't bother me at all... I just really wanted to know if those buttons are just Placebo and they seem to be in my case...

 

I did see a difference in speed of the fan, but sometimes it won't work if you have a taxing program(s) as i guess CPU cooling overrides any other settings.