What does the Minimum Processor State option in the Advanced options box of a Power Plan do?

Question

Original title: Minimum Processor State

What does the 'Minimum Processor State' option in the Advanced Options box of a Power Plan do? If I set it to 50%, does that mean that Windows will feed the processor useless calculations just to keep it at 50% capacity? If so, why would that be of any use? If not, then what does it do?

Thanks for any clarifications,

Rifdhan

Answer 1

Yes, it should.

Answer 2

Hi Rifdhan,

The main reason you would set your Minimum Processor State option to above the minimum (such as 50%) is if you are running very CPU intensive programs and they would not function well at lower CPU states.

Processors do not require a steady stream of information to function at a certain speed. For example if you have a 2.0ghz CPU and you set the minimum processor state to 50%, the lowest it will ever drop to is 1.0ghz, even at idle.

With your minimum set to 50% and maximum set to 100%, the actual speed it runs will stay between those two values and current battery life amount will factor into what speed it chooses to run at with an average of 75%.

If you set your minimum to 5% and maximum to 100% it will drop extremely low to preserve battery life.

Hope this helps explain how this works and hopefully someone else can help clarify further.

Answer 3

it probably does not add much relevance to the conversation but I have had my Sony Vaio laptop for over 8 years now, pushing Windows 7 and it's still running like a champ. It has seen many other competitors come through the house and it just keeps on cruising. And it cruises fast, really fast.

Let me add though that I have never made changes to the processors min/max settings, they have always stayed default.  I only use it for fairly basic tasks (web browsing, uploading pics, watching the occasional Blu ray movie, etc.). I am not a gamer, programmer, or hacker so I can't say I have really drove it to its full potential but I think over 8 years strong is still pretty impressive.  It stays plugged in and on 24/7 and I run backups onto an external hard drive every so often and then completely restore back to factory settings.

Who knows... maybe that's the secret to eternal processor life.... we'll see.

Answer 4

So a for instance for too slow and too fast for my system:

With min 5% max 100%, AutoCAD would run, but would stutter constantly, making it pretty unbearable.  Idle Sys Temp 26C, Working Sys Temp 28C

With min 50% max 100%, AutoCAD would run well, no stuttering,  Idle Sys Temp 26C, Working Sys Temp 30C

With Min 100% Max 100%, Idle System Temp would be 60C, AutoCAD would push it over 80C and shut down the system

Processor AMD Fx 8150 3.6 GHz

I don't think I've ever pushed the computer to actually be at 100%, but it would likely overheat, so maybe 80% is more appropriate.  I also think I may have a limited heat sink and fan.

Answer 5

To answer a few questions about "Why doesn't setting both processor states to 1% ruin my performance?"  The reason is that processors can only operator at certain frequencies.  My laptop's i7 4720HQ runs at 2.5GHz.  Now, the minimum operating frequency is 800MHz.  This is about 30% of my processors speed.  Thus, setting the processor's state between 1-30% all end up operating at 800MHz since that is the lowest the CPU can actually go.

In fact, the CPU can only operate at steps.  Intel's SpeedStep generally only allows increments of 100MHz.  This means that my processor's next lowest operating frequency is 900MHz which is 36% of 2.5GHz.

For more information, take a peek at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedStep