Windows 10 Performance Options
Jason Ramgel
The Windows performance power slider enables end customers to quickly and intelligently trade performance of their system for longer battery life. As a customer switches between the four slider modes to trade performance for battery life (or vice versa), Windows power settings are engaged behind the scenes. You are able to customize the default slider mode for both AC and DC, and can also configure the power settings, and PPM options, that are engaged for each slider mode.
Customers can choose their power mode by moving the slider to the left and right. Customers can choose to prioritize the remaining battery life on the device, or the performance of apps and services running on the device. The screenshot above shows the slider is in the Better Performance slider mode, which is the out-of-box Windows default.
The Windows power slider is available for AMD and Intel platforms running Windows 10, build 1709 and newer builds of Windows. It is not available on devices with Arm64 processors. The slider will appear on a device only when the Balanced power plan, or any plan that is derived from Balanced, is selected. There is not an option for either users or OEMs to remove the slider UX.
Devices that have the High Performance, Power Saver, or any "OEM Recommended" power plans will not be disturbed during the Windows upgrade process. If a user upgrades from a version of Windows that does not support the slider, to a version that does, there will be no change to their High Performance, Power Saver, or "OEM Recommended" power plan. These users will not see the slider UX, and they can still configure their power plans in the same way they could before upgrading.
If you ship a device with a High Performance power plan, such as a gaming device, consider applying the same settings that are defined on the High Performance plan to the Balanced power plan. For example, if the timeout value for powering off the HDD or Display is set to X or Y on High Performance, apply those same values on Balanced.
First, create a provisioning package using Windows Configuration Designer. You will then edit the customizations.xml file contained in the package to include your power settings. Use the XML file as one of the inputs to the Windows Configuration Designer command-line to generate a provisioning package that contains the power settings, then apply the package to the image. For information on how to use the Windows Configuration Designer CLI, see Use the Windows Configuration Designer command-line interface.
You can use overlays to customize the power settings and PPM options that are engaged for each slider mode. In previous versions of Windows, power settings could only be configured per power scheme, and PPM options could only be configured per power profile. The introduction of overlays enables OEMs to better optimize power settings based on the slider mode selected by the user, as opposed to the power scheme or power profile selected by the device.
The Battery Saver mode inherits the settings configured for the Constrained PPM profile (in the ppkg, Setting ProfileAlias should be "Constrained"). The Best Performance mode inherits the settings configured for the Balanced (default) profile. Configure these profiles to customize the settings that are engaged in the associated slider modes. Note that in the ppkg, the Profile SchemeAlias should be "Balanced".
Settings such as disk and display timeouts, and other legacy power settings, are not customizable via the performance/power slider. Only settings which can affect perceived performance differences can be customized across slider modes. Each slider mode should be thought of as a "lite" power plan, which only contains settings that impact performance, such as CPU settings (PPM) and power throttling. Other factors which control performance (GPU, thermals etc) are in OEM/SVs control and they can create custom power-settings for those and connect them to the slider via the INF.
Optimizing PPM enables the OS to favor either power or performance, depending on user preference (similar to the low power media profile that is applied when a user is watching video in full screen mode). PPM settings should favor battery life for the Battery Saver and Better Battery slider modes, and favor performance for the Better and Best Performance slider modes.
PPM options can be configured for all AMD and Intel platforms using Windows Provisioning Framework. To learn more about the PPM options that you can configure, and how to configure them per power scheme, see Processor power management options.
To engage your customized power settings only when the slider is in a particular mode, create an AddPowerSettingDirective in your INF file that indicates the default values for each overlay. There are Default directives that must be included in an AddPowerSetting section. A Default directive specifies the three overlays that apply to an AC and DC power state each.
Starting with Windows release 1903 the slider is available for AC only (i.e. non-battery powered) devices as an OEM opt-in feature. OEM's can define power/performance settings for the 'better battery' and 'max performance' overlays via a provisioning package to enable it for these devices. There are no any inbox defaults associated with the slider for AC only devices, only the below defined settings will be modified as slider position changes. Once deployed it'll will show up under the 'Power and Sleep' page accessible via the inbox settings app.
Most Windows users have multiple apps running on the operating system at the same time, and often, the apps running in the background consume significant power. Windows leverages modern silicon capabilities to run background work in an energy-efficient manner, significantly enhancing battery life. Power throttling saves up to 11% in CPU power by throttling CPU frequency of applications running in the background. With power throttling, when background work is running, Windows places the CPU in its most efficient operating modes. Learn more about this feature in our blog post: Introducing power throttling.
Power throttling is always engaged, unless the slider is set to Best Performance. In this case, all applications will be opted out of power throttling. Users can also opt individual apps out of power throttling in the Battery usage UX:
Our company has many virtual Windows 7 instances. Based on recommendations from VMWare, we want to customize the visual effects to optimize performance. We have found that we can change the following options via GPO:
VMWare wants us to select Custom and then apply very specific options in the check boxes below the four options above. I've found an article to do this via the registry manually but those options do not work. GPO also does not handle this natively. Does anyone know how we can change these options to what we need via GPO?
Finally, if you insist on doing so via a GPO, your best option is probably going to be to use a logon or startup script that sets the registry keys in question. For the most part, they're the same as the key values in XP, but you should be able to do your own Googling to get precise key values for the precise options you want to set.
I'm also having severe performance issues. Raw files are extremely slow to open and Affinity 2 locks up and is unusable while other applications are fine. I had no issues in the older version and was actually able to make the same edits more quickly using the old version on a 10 year old machine. When I check the CPU usage and Ram usage for the computer, it is surprisingly low.
I have some problems of quickness. Take a heavy svg file and try to group all elements in one group. In 1.0 version it s nearly instantanate ( perhaps 1 second), same picture in 2.0, it doesnt finish. ! I return to my old software.
There is a very slowness in the group command. The same picture with an all select and group command are nearly instantaneous with the v1 and with the v2 doesn't finish the group command ( command freezes the software)
Having also noted that load performance in V2 is very slow, I have to add that, once an image (RAW) is loaded, the processing time in V2 is equal and often better than in V1. So, thank you Affinity for getting that nit right!
Similar problem here, in designer and publisher, when getting into complex designs the whole program start to reacts slow at some point. It seems to me that my entire pc is getting slow but not noticing any increased usage loads in the windows task manager. I compared it with the same files in Affinity 1 Designer and publisher and there is no slowdown there.
Same issue here in Designer especially, Even working on relatively simple docs it's very slow to respond between interactions, takes 3-5 seconds to select or deselect. I have found that turning compound/grouped elements in raster has improved this but it's not a solution. My PC is not brand new or anything but it's not a potato yet and should still have a fair performance with such files.
Update - I'm not sure if my issues are the same as others (detailed above). I've realised that not using Designer in full screen, even if I expand it so it almost fills the screen, is getting rid of my stuttering issues. Hope this helps someone else until updates and fixes arrive.
The performance of all applications dropped considerably. In Designer there is a delay in the selections and everything gets slow; in Publisher there is also a delay in the selections and, in addition, it is almost impossible to resize the text frames since it does so after several seconds. I've had to continue working with version 1 which has no issues (okay some but no performance issues).
Having the same issue where Designer 2.0 is unbearably slow between interactions even in relatively basic documents. It will often take 3 or 4 seconds to do anything, even as simple as selecting different objects. I have no issues with the same files on v1. This issue is making v2 pretty much useless from a production point of view.
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