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"Balanced" or "Dell" Power Profiles are Causing Throttling of the Central Processing Unit (CPU)

Summary: This article explains how to set the power profiles to decrease the throttling of the CPU.

This article applies to   This article does not apply to 

Symptoms

Power Profiles are Causing Throttling of the CPU

Despite the balanced power profile stating minimum 5% and maximum 100% CPU, the power profile is limiting performance of rendering and other CPU intensive applications.

Cause

No cause information is available.

Resolution

Change the Power Profile when Handling Large Amounts of Data

When a large amount of data is queued to be processed, the processor clock speed rises and stay at that level until the process is complete. In "Balanced" or "Dell," the CPU returns to default (usually 800 MHz) quickly.

If the system is placed into High Performance, the CPU is allowed to stay at the clock rate necessary to process the queue of data for it. This is more pronounced when using Google Chrome as it is multi-threaded and uses hardware acceleration.

Windows Power Plan Options  SLN294257_en_US__2Throttle2

Balanced:

Windows CPU Performance, Throttled

High Performance:

Windows CPU Performance, Full Speed

Note: This may cause the battery life to suffer on laptops.

If the system is not doing anything CPU intensive such as CAD, Video, or Audio rendering, the system can be placed back into the Balanced power profile until higher performance is needed again.

Windows 10 has also introduced Power Throttling This hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies. options that can allow more granular abilities to manage power by specific applications.

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Affected Products

Alienware, Inspiron, OptiPlex, Vostro, XPS, G Series, G Series, Alienware, Inspiron, Latitude, Vostro, XPS, Fixed Workstations, Mobile Workstations
Article Properties
Article Number: 000139695
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 30 Aug 2024
Version:  5
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