What if I told you you could speed up your PC just by moving a slider towards go faster?
Well, something similar to that is actually built into modern versions of Windows.
The performance power slider was introduced in Windows 10,
and the point is to give laptop and tablet users an easy way to trade off between
performance and power savings, which is important for stretching out your battery life.
In the past, the only real option Microsoft gave you to do that was switching between the
various power plans that you had to dig down into the control panel to find.
The power slider was developed as a simpler, easy-to-understand way to tweak your system's
energy consumption right from the notification area, without having to hunt around or think too much
about how individual programs or settings are affecting the overall power drive,
is this connecting to that or what's- it's all over that place?
Of course, this isn't a super granular, analog-like slider that you see on those
old-school stereo equalizers. There are only four settings you can have the slider set at,
battery saver, which you won't see if the PC is plugged in, better battery, which is sometimes
called recommended, better performance, which is the Windows default, and best performance.
Now, if you don't see the power slider, it's probably because those confusingly similar,
but definitely different, power plans still exist in the control panel, and you don't have
yours set to balanced. You see, the legacy power plans actually control more things than the
performance slider, so if you have a plan other than balanced enabled, that will essentially act
as an override for all your power settings, and you won't see the slider show up. Aw.
But if you pick balanced, the slider will use the balanced plan as a starting point
and tweak performance according to what you select. The settings on the slider only affect
factors that directly impact performance, so it won't control, for example, how long it'll be
until your display turns off. So in reality, each slider setting is like a mini power plan.
Instead, you'll notice more or less responsiveness in your programs depending on where you have
the slider set. One major difference between each of the settings is the behavior of background
programs that you're not directly interacting with at a given moment. By default, Windows
throttles the CPU frequency for these programs to save energy, but if you're noticing sluggish
performance, you can change the slider to a higher setting or just set it to best performance,
which disables background throttling completely. But is there a best setting to use most of the time?
Unfortunately, we can't answer that question due to the near infinite number of use cases and
hardware configurations out there, and on top of that, computer manufacturers can actually
customize what exactly each setting on the slider does before your PC ever makes its way to you.
This is to better adapt each setting to that PC's specific needs. For example, some Lenovo
laptops tie in fan speeds to the performance slider. And speaking of laptops, the slider only
shows up by default on laptops and other devices that run off a battery. A manufacturer can enable
it for desktops, but if your desktop doesn't have it, you can change the same settings under
power mode in the new settings app. Ultimately, you'll have to play around and see which setting
gives you the best balance of power savings and performance in whichever situations you use your
computer for. Or just set it to max, plug it in, burn some extra money on your power bill if that
makes you feel like a big man. And I'd say it's pretty big of you to watch all the way to the end
of this video. Thanks for that. Hey, if you liked the video, like it. Dislike it if you disliked it.
Check out our other videos, comment below with video suggestions, and don't forget to subscribe
and follow. But you already know all that. You're the best.