Best Power Plan for Gaming in Windows 11 — Ultimate Performance Guide

Your Windows power plan controls how aggressively your CPU and GPU are allowed to perform. Balanced adjusts power use according to workload. Compare it with other available plans in the same game; results depend on the hardware. Here's how to review and compare the available plans.

Balanced vs High Performance vs Ultimate Performance

Windows 11 comes with three main power plans. Here's what each one does and how they compare for gaming:

Balanced (Default)

• CPU scales frequency based on load — ramps down during "idle" moments
• CPU parking enabled — cores go to sleep when not fully utilized
• PCI Express link state power management enabled — saves power on GPUs and SSDs
• USB selective suspend enabled — USB devices may sleep
• Possible effect in games: on some PCs, clock ramp-up can show as frame time spikes

High Performance

• Requests a higher minimum processor state where supported; compare actual clock behavior on your system.
• CPU parking disabled — cores are not parked (an unparked core can still be idle)
• PCI Express power management set to moderate savings
• Display and sleep timers extended
• Possible effect in games: CPU still scales frequency, with a higher minimum

Ultimate Performance

• Processor kept in high-performance states (still subject to temperature and power limits)
• Core parking settings depend on the plan and platform. Disabling parking does not mean every core is continuously busy.
• Disables PCI Express link power saving where supported; it does not keep the GPU or SSD permanently at maximum power.
• USB selective suspend disabled where supported; other device power-management mechanisms may still apply.
• Hard disk never turns off
• Possible effect in games: less clock ramp-up; temperature and power limits still apply — compare on your PC

How to Unlock Ultimate Performance

Ultimate Performance is hidden by default on most Windows 11 installations. Here's how to unlock it:

powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

If the plan doesn't appear after running the command, try this alternative:

powercfg -setactive e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

What Each Setting Controls

Power plans are composed of dozens of sub-settings. Here are several settings to review when comparing power plans for gaming:

Processor Power Management

• Minimum processor state: a processor power-policy setting. Its value and effect on actual clocks depend on the plan and platform; it is not a guaranteed clock frequency.
• Maximum processor state: review the current value and the manufacturer's guidance. Compare supported settings while monitoring clocks, temperature and power limits.
• System cooling policy: Set to "Active" — this tells the system to increase fan speed before throttling the CPU.

# Set minimum processor state to 100%
powercfg /setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor PROCTHROTTLEMIN 100
powercfg /setactive scheme_current

CPU Parking

CPU parking puts idle cores to sleep. When a game needs those cores again, returning parked cores to service may affect frame times on some systems. Compare before and after.

# Disable CPU parking (set min cores to 100%)
powercfg /setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor CPMINCORES 100
powercfg /setactive scheme_current

Processor Performance Boost Mode

This controls whether your CPU uses turbo boost. For gaming, you want it set to "Aggressive" or "Enabled".

# Set processor boost to aggressive
powercfg /setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor PERFBOOSTMODE 2
powercfg /setactive scheme_current

PCI Express Link State Power Management

Set to: Off. This setting allows the PCI Express bus (which connects your GPU, NVMe SSD, and other components) to enter low-power states. If frame-time spikes coincide with power-state transitions, test this setting and restore it if there is no benefit.

USB Selective Suspend

Set to: Disabled. This disables USB selective suspend where supported; other device power-management mechanisms may still apply. Sleeping USB devices can cause input lag when they wake up.

AMD Ryzen Considerations

AMD Ryzen CPUs have unique power management features that interact differently with Windows power plans:

• AMD Ryzen Balanced plan: If available after installing AMD chipset drivers, this plan is specifically tuned for Ryzen's boost behavior and can be compared with the Windows plans supported by your processor and chipset
• PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive): Enable in BIOS for automatic overclocking — Its behavior depends on the processor, firmware, cooling and power limits.
• CPPC (Collaborative Processor Performance Control): Enable in BIOS — lets Windows communicate with the CPU more precisely about frequency scaling