Yip here is a little “How TO”
These tweaks are for win10 pro for desktop. This should never be applied to a laptop as the laptop cooling solution will most definitely not cope. It will use around 30% more power at idol and 10-15% more at full load. This means that the CPU will run hotter and or fans will have to spin slightly faster.
These settings are saved within the Ultimate Performance Power Plan and the process priority is non-persistent so disabling them is as easy as changing the power plan to “High Performance” from “Ultimate Performance” and maybe only using “Ultimate Performance” when needed. It is the combination of Disabling the Idol Process in Ultimate Performance mode power plan.
Many Power settings affect processor state and performance, most are hidden. “Windows 10 for Workstations” introduced a power state that reduced micro interruptions in the Data path. Basically, it stops the OS from continually interrupting the active process. This is most noticeable on drive access and Realtime operations. This performance mode also allows for reduced access times on SSD’s. There is also a small processor load improvement of a few percent. It is a more flued experience than High Performance mode.
The first thing is to make the win10 for workstation power mode “Ultimate Performance” available in power options.
Open a command prompt with admin privileges copy and paste the in the following the press enter:
powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
While the cmd window is open we will need to unhide the Idol Process option in the power scheme by copy and past the following into the cmd window and press enter.
powercfg -attributes SUB_PROCESSOR 5d76a2ca-e8c0-402f-a133-2158492d58ad -ATTRIB_HIDE
The Idol Process is a power saving mechanism that saves CPU cycles by not processing every cycle. Windows Task manager does not report CPU usage but rather the Idle Process amount. It always skips cycles. This is good for power saving and management but bad for latency when at low CPU loads it is skipping many CPU cycles. This also means that the windows Task Manager will now show 100% CPU usage but this is not the case.
I use Bitsum’s Process Lasso and Park Control to manage process priority. This also gives me an idea of CPU usage.
Another few honorable mentions is to set the process and the child process that you are working on, that would be Cubase/Nuendo, process priority in task manager’s “Details” pan to “Above Normal” or “High” on each program launch or use Process Lasso to adjust it to Above Normal or High. Cuebase already does this but other processes you might want to lower like a video encoding for the next to picture work. Process Lasso is also useful for managing these if your machine is used for many different things not only audio.
And to set PCIe “Link Power state” to “OFF” and the annoying “USB Selective Suspend” to “Disabled”
These are my tweaks that work for me, there are many more things I do for my system to stabilize performance and to be constant.
Please remember not to try this on a laptop and be aware of CPU temps if you have a borderline cooling solution.
Enjoy