Gaming Mode 2.0

Jeremy Collake · December 31, 2014, 02:10:43 AM

This thread informs about the revamped Gaming Mode, and continued work upon it. Let's keep it relatively clean. Part of this is to help with an upcoming promotion. I know it will be repetitive (parts) to those who regularly follow this forum.

Revamped Gaming Mode 2.0

For a long time, Bitsum provided the knowledge and capacity for users to customize their power plans, and automate when those power plans are induced. With ParkControl, we revealed hidden CPU settings that control core parking, and wrote about how much core parking and CPU frequency scaling can affect performance of real-world CPU loads.

Put simply, these power saving technologies work well to conserving energy, but come with a trade-off. When the CPU is down-clocked or cores parked, it is not ready to execute code, and thus some degree of ramp-up time is required when new code needs executed. This especially impacts performance when the CPU activity comes in bursts, which is the most common type of CPU load.

Now Process Lasso offers a power plan pre-configured for maximal performance. When in this new Bitsum Highest Performance power plan, your CPU always remains ready to execute new code. Core parking is disabled and the CPU is always running at itâ€™s maximum frequency. You can automate when it is induced with Process Lassoâ€™s Gaming Mode, or you can use the default application power profiles feature.

Thus, Gaming Mode will induce this new highest performance power plan, and also make a few tweaks to the behavior of ProBalance - which will keep background processes from interfering with your game play.

We hope our users enjoy this new capability!

Links:

Latest Gaming Mode Docs
Process Lasso - Where you get Gaming Mode

ParkControl - Freeware to make it easier for advanced users to configure their power plans for maximum performance.

Michael Z Freeman · January 11, 2015, 01:10:20 PM

Great to see the gaming mode released.

I'd like to request a mode (unless there's already some way doing this) that closes ALL background processes and services, antivirus, disconnects network connection (optional). I mean everything closed unless something is literally going to crash the entire OS if removed. Reason I ask is that I encountered a situation with Far Cry 4 where the game appears to have random memory conflicts with some background tasks (which I usually have open with other games OK) which causes serious in game stuttering. It's intermittent, but after removing or closing everything including antivirus the problem disappeared. I can't see any other utils (yeah, that I trust!) that do this automatically, and most services/tasks that you need open for convenience are fiddly to disable/renable manually.

Jeremy Collake · January 11, 2015, 05:29:17 PM

This is definitely on my radar and being thought about and developed.

Michael Z Freeman · January 13, 2015, 01:03:38 PM

Thanks, that's great to know

Michael Z Freeman · January 15, 2015, 10:08:36 AM

Another thing I just noticed are the numerous tasks in the task scheduler. Many of them are not set to run only in idle time. Another thing that explains previously unexplained stuttering in my games. I guess temporarily stopping the task scheduler service should do it, although there may be other ways. Another one is automatic updates installing in the background, if set to do that. There must be numerous others and I find it amazing that Windows is not already setup by default to stop all this stuff if running a game.

edkiefer · January 15, 2015, 10:20:12 AM

AFAIK those basic tasks only run when cpu is idling , so many of them shouldn't affect during a game, but again depends on whats installed .

BenYeeHua · January 15, 2015, 10:48:29 AM

Yup, I guess you has enabled the log process launches?
If you has enabled this logging, then you can see which software is launching(by task scheduler) when you are playing the game.

Jeremy Collake · January 16, 2015, 12:58:04 AM

Quote from: djbarney on January 15, 2015, 10:08:36 AM
Another thing I just noticed are the numerous tasks in the task scheduler. Many of them are not set to run only in idle time. Another thing that explains previously unexplained stuttering in my games. I guess temporarily stopping the task scheduler service should do it, although there may be other ways. Another one is automatic updates installing in the background, if set to do that. There must be numerous others and I find it amazing that Windows is not already setup by default to stop all this stuff if running a game.

Those tasks actually have options such as 'don't run until idle for X minutes', so they aren't as bad as they might appear at first glance. Some are run only once. Some are run on very particular conditions. Many are run on user login.

Windows NT6+ (Vista and above) does a reasonably good (not perfect) job of keeping it's crap out of the way. However, third-party applications often do far worse. Thus, to tackle this problem, you really need to collect a large database of third-party applications.

Jeremy Collake · January 16, 2015, 01:44:07 AM

BTW, temporarily disabling the Task Scheduler in it's entirety is ... debatable. I suppose it would be alright to do during Games, just make sure it's turned back on.

I may add such capability.

For other system services already running, they really aren't an issue in most cases -- against, except for third-party apps. So, again we're at the point of needing to build a database of problematic third-party services, their degree of impact, and ensure that it's ok to temporary stop them.