Thermal Control Strategy & Gaming

The only games I play on my VPCZ122GX are WoW & SC2. WoW seems to run fine, but SC2 just runs "okay". Its on all medium settings @ 1600x900, and I get 30 fps with vertical sync and disable mouse lag both turned on, but when the screen gets cluttered it slows down.

My question is: does changing the thermal control strategy to performance mode actually increase my ingame performance? If so, it'd be a real pain to change my thermal control strategy to performance every time i want to game. If it does make a difference, is there any way to set it up so that the thermal control setting is contingent upon the power plan? That way when i'm on high performance it will be on "performance", and when I turn the computer on balanced the thermal setting will change as well - if its possible

 

I'm not sure if the sort of binding you're looking for is possible, but for me I linked one of the buttons to cycle between the power modes:



So if I need to be in performance I just tap on the button until the screen shows the one I want.

 

I've run some pretty demanding games on my Z - including Crysis - both with and without a different thermal strategy. I never really noticed too much of a difference either way. The reason for that, I think, is that the CPU is very quick to respond to the demand and throttle up to full speed. The only difference between the "Balanced" and "Performance" strategies, I think, is in their lower threshold (i.e. how slow they will allow the CPU to throttle down to). They both allow the full upper speed limit (including the boost speed). Thus, any speed loss will be limited to the microseconds it takes the processor to reach full speed.

That said, my OCD compelled me to configure the window snap button (the one between the Assist and Vaio buttons on US models) as TofuTurkey has indicated.

 

Thanks guys. I appreciate the intel. For whatever reason, I feel SC2 runs smoother in performance mode, even though the fps is the same, I feel an overall "smoothness" increase. Now that the button is bound and its so easy to swap, it'll do nicely. I really wish I could make a profile that would switch to performance any time I opened SC2, but a man can only dream - no?