Activate maximum performance plan in windows 10

In case you did not know, there is a way to activate maximum performance plan in Windows 10. And it is that the operating system has various functions to manage in an advanced way the energy consumed by the components. In this article we will see how to activate this hidden plan thanks to a small trick.

But in addition to activating it, we will also make a comparison between the most used plans together with the new plan that we will activate, as much in energy consumption as frames per second, benchmarking Shadow of the Tomb Rider with the equipment configured in each one from them.

Index of contents

What are energy profiles

Before going straight into the procedure, I think it would be a good idea to quickly explain what power profiles are and how to access them in Windows 10.

An energy profile is basically a configuration located in the control panel that manages the power of our entire computer in a relatively advanced way. Thanks to a power plan, the operating system interacts with the components of the computer to maximize performance or instead to minimize the energy consumed at all times.

Among the elements that it is capable of managing we have: hard drives, PCI slots, processor, USB ports or the screen. It also has options to configure the start / stop buttons, multimedia settings, networks and some other things that we can actually configure by accessing the corresponding place.

In any case, we say that it is a relatively advanced method because it does not give us too many options for the user, nor does it provide complete transparency on how it performs this energy management. We can only change elements such as minimum and maximum processor load, shutdown of hard drives, and style options for what we have discussed.

We don't have power measurements, voltage parameters and none of this. In fact, there will be very similar profiles to the user view that will then generate different performance results.

How to access Windows 10 power options

The next step that we must learn is to access the power options of our operating system, although this is quite simple with the Windows search engine.

What we must do is open the start menu and type " Edit power plan " in the search engine. As soon as the search result appears with a battery icon, we will click to access it. In this way we will appear in the window that we will see below.

We don't really appear in the main menu of the performance profiles. So we will have to press above, in the navigation bar on " Power Options " to go back one step.

Well here are all the profiles available at the moment. The most normal thing is that we have a balanced one, another economizer and perhaps a high-performance one if we are not in a laptop. In addition, we can see other different ones in the case of laptops, which are added by the factory manufacturer itself.

Well, if we click on " change the plan settings " then we will access the starting window, and there we can modify a couple of options about the suspension of the equipment and the screen. But the most interesting setting is in " Change advanced power settings ". To mention that we can also create our own plan.

This is where we will see all the options that we referred to in the previous section, where we can interact with the hardware to modify its energy consumption in a rather untransparent way.

Activate maximum performance plan in Windows 10

We already know where the energy plans are, and I can tell you that there will be no trace of the “maximum performance” plan. For us to understand, it's basically the most aggressive plan the system has for team performance.

And the truth is that it is very similar to the "High performance", at least in the visible configuration, but nothing further from reality the team will present better performance with the most aggressive plan. Then we will see the results.

It is also important to know that this plan has been available in the system since version 1803 (Creators Update) so it is good to know what version of the system we have to be sure that the plan will appear. To do this, we will only have to open the Run tool with the key combination " Windows + R " and type " WINVER"

A window will appear informing us of the version of Windows that we will have. If it is greater than 1803 then without any problem. Let's start the process.

And the first thing will be to open a Windows PowerShell window as Administrator, so we will right click on the start button and from this secondary menu we will choose the corresponding option.

Next, we will have PowerShell in administrator mode and it will be time to execute the command that will enable the maximum performance profile in the system. That command will be the following:

powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

We will paste it as is, and a message regarding the plan and its activation will appear in the system GUI.

If we now reopen the power options, we will see that this new plan is listed. If you had it open, just refresh the window again to make it visible. We should not confuse "High performance" with "Maximum performance".

From now on, we will simply click on this plan to activate or deactivate it, and in theory, our team will perform at its best, at least in what is within the reach of the operating system.

Performance comparison between Windows power profiles

It is the moment to make a comparison for the different energy profiles where we will see if it is really worth activating the maximum performance plan. Perhaps you have never stopped to think whether actually selecting one profile or another improves the equipment's energy efficiency or performance, so today is the time.

The breads that we will compare will be the Economizer, Balanced, High performance and Maximum Performance.

Setting plan options

Through four different screenshots we help each other to see the main differences between all the plans. Obviously we are not going to see them all in detail, because everyone will have them available on their PC and will be able to see them option by option.

But we must keep something important, and that is that the balanced energy plans and economizer have established a minimum performance of the CPU at 5%, while the other two have it at 100%, what does this mean? It implies that when the computer is doing nothing, the system will automatically reduce the CPU frequency to as low as possible, especially in economizer mode. Whereas, in the most aggressive plans, this frequency will be kept practically at maximum always, even if the CPU is "free".

Another difference lies in the power management of the PCIe slots, we already know that in one of them we will have our graphics card installed, so it will directly affect the graphics performance. In this case, both maximum plan and high performance are exactly the same, and they have this option deactivated, while in the other two plans it is considered a considerable energy saving.

Precisely, the only palpable difference between the maximum performance and high performance plan is only the shutdown of the hard drives, in the most aggressive it is not contemplated to turn them off, while in the other it is. Po the rest is the same, how will this affect us when it comes to playing?

Performance table

And with this we come to the important section where we will see and analyze the results obtained. The equipment with which we have carried out these tests has the following hardware:

• CPU Intel Core i5-6500 Board Asus Z270 Prime GPU Nvidia GTX 1060 ED Hard drives SD Kingston and 2 HDD SeagatePSU Corsair VS 650W 80 Plus Monitor ViewSonic VX3211 4K

As for the game we have tested, it is Shadow of the Tomb Rider, at 1080p resolution and High graphic quality, without other modifications.

Well, nothing, quite normal for what we see today, so let's see the results. Let's see what happens when activating maximum performance plan.

	Idle consumption (W)	Consumption Playing (W)	FPS
Economizer	84	203	79
Balanced	89	213	84
High performance	96	218	85
Maximum performance	96	219	88

Well, surely the least expected would be that the performance between the two aggressive plans was so different in terms of FPS in play. We have already seen that the configuration in options was similar, but the truth is that this is not reflected in performance. The tests were of course carried out consecutively all and with the same graphic configuration and the same benchmark, the game's own.

Also note that the increase in FPS is 9 from the economizer plan to the maximum performance plan, which is a quite significant result. So, referring to performance, the truth is that this plan benefits us a lot.

If we go to see the consumption in W of all the equipment next to the monitor, we have some differences that are not too great, since from the eco mode to the maximum there is 16W in charge. It is true that on a desktop computer these differences vary little, much less than on a laptop, but neither does justice to the lower performance in games.

Especially in aggressive plans, where consumption is exactly the same in both, while FPS is much better in the new activated plan. And we can make it clear that, rather than improving consumption, what makes Windows cut resources.

Difference in CPU frequency

Finally we will show a few screenshots referring to the different performance plans with the HWiNFO software showing the CPU working frequency when it is not loaded.

In the first screenshot we have the economizer plan, which clearly shows how the frequency is reduced almost to the minimum when the CPU is without load. However, in the other two screenshots, referring to the two high and maximum performance plans, we have an almost maximum frequency even without any work. This perfectly matches what we saw earlier in the advanced plan options

Conclusion and links of interest

Well, we have already learned to activate the maximum performance plan in Windows 10 and we have also analyzed the difference quite completely and graphically.

And the truth is that we did not expect a better performance from this plan than the high-performance one, but the improvements are significant, so we have no choice but to recommend this power plan if we have a gaming-oriented PC where we can get the most of the.

We also made it clear that the cut in hardware resources by the system does not reflect an excessive improvement in the overall consumption of the equipment, since for 16 W less we have obtained 9 FPS less, and it is too little savings in my point of view. In short, having the maximum performance plan on a desktop PC will have little influence on the electricity bill.

We leave you with some interesting links:

We hope that this tutorial-comparison has been useful to you, and if you have any problem or question, please let us know in the comment box.