Windows 10: Introducing Power Throttling in Windows 10

Brink · Apr 17, 2017

You may remember some of our January power experiments we mentioned in Build 15002’s release notes. Power Throttling was one of those experiments, and showed up to 11% savings in CPU power consumption for some of the most strenuous use cases. We’ve been hard at work making improvements and listening to Windows Insider feedback since then, so this capability should help many of you see a nice boost in battery life!

Figure 1 – Task Manager shows which processes are Power throttled

Note: Power Throttling is currently available only for processors with Intel’s Speed Shift technology, available in Intel’s 6th-gen (and beyond) Core processors – we’re working on expanding support to other processors as well over the next few months.

How does it work? To give great performance to the apps you’re using, while at the same time power throttling background work, we built a sophisticated detection system into Windows. The OS identifies work that is important to you (apps in the foreground, apps playing music, as well as other categories of important work we infer from the demands of running apps and the apps the user interacts with). While this detection works well for most apps, if you happen to notice an app that is negatively impacted by Power Throttling, we really want to know!! You can do 3 things:

1. Provide feedback! Please run the Feedback Hub and file feedback under the Power and Battery > Throttled Applications category

2. Control power throttling system-wide, using the Power Slider

3. Opt individual apps out from Power Throttling:

*Arrow Manage Battery Usage by App in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Apps Features Tutorials

Go to Battery Settings (Settings > System > Battery).

Select your app.

Note that benchmark results may vary with power throttling turned on. While most benchmarks run fine and produce great performance results, some benchmark processes may be affected by throttling. Our general recommendation is to always run performance benchmarks while plugged in, as power throttling does not apply in that case.

Developer note: Power throttling is designed to work well with applications out of the box, but we recognize that in some cases, application developers may be able to provide additional power savings by having more fine-grained control over Power Throttling. We will have APIs to provide more fine grained control in upcoming flights. Please make sure to watch out for API updates on MSDN.

*Power throttling is a temporary working name for this capability and may change during the course of the development cycle for the next release of Windows.

Thanks,

Bill
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Source: Introducing Power Throttling - Windows Experience Blog

See also:

Change Power Mode Level in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

Manage Battery Usage by App in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Apps Features Tutorials

:)

PhilipLishman · Apr 17, 2017

Windows 10 Power management

Windows 10 uses more CPU when idle than when in use. Please fix this.

Background processes, such as virus scanning, consume all available CPU when idle, as indicated by fans running at full speed when the computer is unattended, even on a laptop. This would seem to undo all efficiencies due to CPU throttling, power management
etc. that were introduced since the "Energy Star" generation of PCs.

A new VW?

Herman2 · Apr 17, 2017

Resource Monitor and Task Manager showing incorrect CPU usage, or is my CPU capped at 33%?

Your CPU is not running at maximum frequency. See the first screenshot in the top next to the blue bar graph. I'd suggest to check the power settings of the laptop, and set it to "High Performance" (in windows 10 you will need to go to 'additional power
settings'). You can also check the settings of the power plan to confirm it is not throttling the CPU, under advanced power settings and then processor power management. The CPU may also be throttled because of high temperatures.

CountMike · Apr 18, 2017

New processors have some of that built in but also have to be backed up by OS. Ryzen for instance has many temperature, voltage and power sensors that are supposed to give best performance for a task without letting it overload anything. It's supposed to keep heat and voltage at minimum. Part of it is adjustable from BIOS/EFI but OS has to take advantage of it.

vgchat · Apr 19, 2017

New processors have some of that built in but also have to be backed up by OS. Ryzen for instance has many temperature, voltage and power sensors that are supposed to give best performance for a task without letting it overload anything. It's supposed to keep heat and voltage at minimum. Part of it is adjustable from BIOS/EFI but OS has to take advantage of it.
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It's unlikely that desktops have a battery, which is where most ryzen's are likely to be found. I'm not sure if any laptop uses ryzen yet.

CountMike · Apr 4, 2018

It's unlikely that desktops have a battery, which is where most ryzen's are likely to be found. I'm not sure if any laptop uses ryzen yet.
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It's not only battery that is of concern but overall efficiency of whole system, less power = less heat (processor as well as rest of the system). GPUs have that built in for a while now. Conventional core parking and other automatic power regulation is/was introducing some lags in performance due to coarseness of steps involved.

Windows 10: Introducing Power Throttling in Windows 10

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