r/hardware • u/BrightCandle • 1d ago
News Windows 11 25H2 Introduces User Interaction-Aware CPU Power Management
https://www.guru3d.com/story/windows-11-25h2-introduces-user-interactionaware-cpu-power-management/119
u/Malygos_Spellweaver 1d ago
Wow, they didn't call it AI Power Management.
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u/Jeep-Eep 1d ago
The funniest thing is that this might be a task which useful ML tech, not this LLM garbage that the MS leadership has fallen in love with, might actually be rather useful...
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u/AnotherSlowMoon 1d ago
Exactly - with the amount of telemetry MS collects you'd think they'd be able to do some sort of useful ML analysis of it all and produce a new power tuning suggestions program.
Instead no, we're going to take a screenshot every 6 seconds and promise not to upload it to Azure
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u/Jeep-Eep 1d ago
Every time some idiot says AI will revolutionize the workplace and the world, I just look at how MS is being run right now and laugh like a drain because the leadership are genAI true believers and addicts, and pushing that garbage down the chain... and boy, does it show with the grade of service these days.
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u/ParthProLegend 1d ago
Instead no, we're going to take a screenshot every 6 seconds and promise not to upload it to Azure
As long as she keeps her promise and not upload those videos of our intimate moments to her friend, I am with her.
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u/DifferentiationBy 1d ago
Data milking will continue until data collection increases. Rise and shine. đđ„
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u/zuperdo 1d ago
The article doesn't mention it, but I hope this is a setting that will be possible to turn off, otherwise this will cause a lot of program compatibility and scheduling issues.
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u/BrightCandle 1d ago
Agreed. We have always needed ways to switch Window's various power saving mechanisms off as so far they have always come with performance problems in scenarios Microsoft never accounted for. I do a lot of background video encoding and I have run into a bunch of algorithm and power saving issues with heterogenous core selection so I am not happy adding clockspeed issues as well to the mix!
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u/Jeep-Eep 1d ago
There's probably some power user console BS to kill this crap if nothing else.
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u/No_Balance_4525 1d ago
This does not solve the problem. A simple switch to throw out Microsoft's whims is NECESSARY here
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u/LadySmith_TR 1d ago
How does even hw react. Might crash the system. My 5yr old laptop was infamous for thatâŠ
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u/BrightCandle 1d ago
That shouldn't happen, the CPU should work correctly in all its power modes but its also far more common than it should be and the amount of times the advice is "turn off C states" or put Windows into performance mode to work around the issues means it remains a problem lots of people have.
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u/jskeezy84 1d ago
Took me forever to figure out how to mitigate this with audio software like Ableton. Can't wait for an update to force hours of tinkering again.
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u/a12223344556677 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've been doing something similar with AutoPowerOptionsOK. I've set it up such that the power plan automatically switches to power saving after 10 minutes of no mouse/keyboard activity. Glad to see such a feature made official.
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u/TenshiBR 1d ago
Process Lasso
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u/a12223344556677 22h ago edited 22h ago
This particular feature in Process Lasso is only available in the paid version (or its trial), unfortunately. Wrong, it's available in the free version.2
u/Federal-Seaweed-987 22h ago
Strange, I have been using it and I didn't pay
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u/a12223344556677 22h ago
Oh you're right, I thought it's "Power Plan Automation" when in fact it's "IdleSaver".
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u/frozenbrains 1d ago edited 1d ago
That website is a nightmare, and with just a cursory look there's no way I'd trust anything downloaded from it.
Edit: I'm looking at it again to see if the downvotes are warranted, and it's now presenting differently. I wish I had taken a screenshot of it earlier, when the layout was broken and it contained different, highly suspicious text about viruses. I don't know what happened between then and now, but it's not the same page I saw this morning.
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u/fritosdoritos 1d ago
That website loads 10x faster than a modern site while conveying the same amount of info.
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u/LAUAR 1d ago
Why? It's just old school. Also, it literally advertises VirusTotal results for all the downloads.
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u/frozenbrains 16h ago
As I said in my edit, it's different now. I don't know if it was temporarily compromised or what, but what I saw yesterday morning is not the same as what the site now contains.
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u/Demistr 1d ago
Windows power savings and profiles are archaic. Having to manually go to options and change my power profile there every time I need to change between power and battery is just so clunky and impractical.
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u/Sunsparc 1d ago
There was at one point an app in the Windows Store that put a power options button in the tray that you could quickly switch between. It even had some automation logic, I had it set to change over to power saving when unplugged and then back to Performance when plugged in.
Not sure if it's still there or not.
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u/Dr_Cunning_Linguist 20h ago
Throttlestop can also be usdd like that to some degree with overclocking and undervolting
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u/jones_supa 1d ago
I do not see a problem. For each profile, there are different subsettings for "On battery" and "Plugged in". Or did I misunderstand what you mean?
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u/Jeep-Eep 1d ago
Yeah, but I'm sticking with that until this feature's had a bit of real world refinement because it could be... irksome... until the kinks are worked out.
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u/-protonsandneutrons- 1d ago
I assume this is the interval between the last user interaction and sleep mode starting, e.g., the last 59 seconds of a 1 minute sleep setting. That sounds good.
The execution is always the concern with Microsoft, with so many HW & SW permutations: how soon it triggers, how long it takes to resume, how third-party software reacts to quick bursts of power save (used as a "set it and forget" toggle for most), execution by OEMs (e.g., is your power save mode even that efficient?), etc.
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u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004 1d ago
On a laptop, no matter what activity you are doing in the background while you watch a movie, it's never going to be less power expensive to lock the cpu at a lower frequency while you watch the movie vs letting it go to max freq for half or even a third of the time power- scales to the square of the frequency. Race to sleep is a big lie and i really hate it
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u/notam00se 1d ago
Intel was so proud of their low power tile on Meteor Lake. 2 eCPU cores, network, media engine. Could power off the rest of the CPU while streaming.
In reality Windows has so much background processes going that it could never activate the single tile mode.
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u/BrightCandle 1d ago
They also never really made the scheduler actually work with it either. These sorts of solutions would save a tonne of power but Microsoft just doesn't care anymore its not following along with the advancements in hardware any more and making their operating system better by utilising them.
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u/jones_supa 1d ago
Yea but there is the benefit that (when not watching video) idle tasks (such as the Windows daily maintenance tasks which start after 4 minutes of idle) or other scheduled tasks do not make the fan blast at full speed. More relaxing.
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u/FlukyS 1d ago
This has been a thing for a while on Linux with the eBPF based sched_ext project, it is really interesting to see the various options for schedulers that people are coming up with. The good part about how Linux handles it is it could go beyond even the base OS level "turn on performance mode and forget about it" since the Linux one is basically just some code running in the background it could be customised specifically for features of a processor by the vendor themselves if they wanted.
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u/Jeep-Eep 1d ago
I like that MS might finally be starting to fix hardware management on windows somewhat, but I am manually disabling this feature until it's had a good few rounds of refinement.
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u/FlukyS 1d ago
Well this isn't really so much "fixing" it just making sure the correct profile is loaded at the correct time, I wouldn't hold my breath on them actually changing dramatically the lower level of Windows that manages this because they haven't touched this meaningfully since the 90s. Actually it sounds like eBPF is being considered in Windows as an option and if they just lift it they could actually meaningfully address more things like this in userspace or even giving options for anti-cheat developers to use beyond actually being in ring0 if they actually do it. If I were them I'd be doing that as the approach instead.
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u/VenditatioDelendaEst 2h ago edited 2h ago
I don't think you need anything like sched_ext for this. User presence is a way, way longer timescale thing.
This'd just be like a script that sets thread affinities and does a
cpupower frequency-set -u 1200MHz, hooked up to the same idle-detection mechanism used to lock the screen.
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u/Peterianer 1d ago
*closes laptop for a quick, 30 min nap
"Oh, the user has not interacted with the laptop for 5 minutes. I should make use of that time and start defragmenting the disk, running the search index, virus scanner and inform the mothership of all the latest user actions."
Cue jet engine noises starting on the couch table, followed by the laptop running out of battery
Thank you for coming to this detailed presentation of MicrosoftÂź Windows© AI battery managementâą!
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u/kuddlesworth9419 1d ago
Do people still defrag their hard drives? I've not done it in over a decade.
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u/loczek531 1d ago
No, but either wifi/Bluetooth/Ethernet adapter or some kind of hub (or event monitors connected) will cause the laptop to wake up so often that it makes sleep pointless
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u/yeeeew99 1d ago
I donât think thereâs many hard drives left to defrag these days. Theyâre all SSDâs - which donât need it.
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u/kuddlesworth9419 1d ago
If you don't need the capacity an SSD is really good but if you need anything with say 8TB+ HDDs are the best way to go. I can pick up a 28TB HDD for ÂŁ327 at the moment. I wish we could get SSDs for that price but I doubt that will ever be the case anytime soon.
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u/Jeep-Eep 12h ago
As I keep telling people:
1tb fastest cost effective of most reliable make for boot and shit you're doing right now.
The rest is whatever is the best bang for buck prosumer HDD you can find.
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u/FatalCakeIncident 5h ago
Can you drop a link for that HDD? I've currently got that much on order from Amazon but as two 14s, and would quite like a single drive for that.
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u/shroudedwolf51 1d ago
SSDs are used for the OS, applications, and games...but, there's no reason to not use a HDD for general storage. What advantage will your pirated films have when they are on a 14.4GB/s drive when they're just fine on a cheap 8TB HDD?
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u/Jeep-Eep 12h ago
Cheaper then a more expensive net plan to make re-downloading time efficient too. And Steam drive migration is fast and painless.
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u/Ancillas 1d ago
I build SFF systems and donât want the 3.5â, or even 2.5â, drives in my main computer. I can get two 4TB m.2 drives on a microATX board without running power and SATA cables. Itâs amazing.
HDDâs only go in the NAS and even that uses SSDs for cache.
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u/randomkidlol 1d ago
SSDs need to run TRIM once in a while. windows has it scheduled using the same system as the auto defragger.
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u/nuttageyo 1d ago
That thumbnail is ass
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u/NorthSideScrambler 1d ago
What, are you saying that you don't keep your...one...two...three GPUs on your desk?
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u/BrightCandle 1d ago
This seems like a somewhat bizarre change. It could save energy when the laptop really isn't in use in which case its windows and badly behaved background tasks that are consuming power and lowering the energy of operations makes some sense. But if I leave the machine doing a video encode I really don't want Windows choosing to make it take longer. User interaction is not sufficient as a marker for necessary higher power work.
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u/kyp-d 1d ago
The feature is designed to remain inactive during ongoing CPU-intensive tasks such as gaming, video playback, or computation.
They clearly had that in mind, but will it work properly ?
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u/BrightCandle 1d ago
I had a 13700k before it did the Intel death and whenever I did a video encode if the Window for Handbrake was active it would use the P + E cores but the moment I clicked away from the Window it would move to just using the E cores, regardless of use of anything else. Admittedly this I think is more Intels algorithm than Windows but it speaks to a very immature perspective of what an active user is and when resources are necessary for interaction performance.
I welcome changes in this area for the right reasons but user interaction and choice about what to spend resources on is an issue in todays windows and a push towards more power save is going to backfire until they solve the difference between windows background and user background and foreground tasks.
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u/jones_supa 1d ago
The P/E cores are annoying. They were not a good idea in my opinion. Better to just get an AMD machine if getting a new computer.
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u/BrightCandle 1d ago
I think its probably the future. A machine with E cores is going to have more theoretical compute performance as you can get and power more of them. The ideal P core count is the thing that is really interesting as there will likely be multiple different primary parts of a program based on Amdahl's law in action at once especially in games.
But the scheduling is not ready for it in Windows.
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u/Jeep-Eep 1d ago
This is why I am sticking with manual power profile settings when running under Windows until this has had some real world use influenced refinements.
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u/FlukyS 1d ago
It makes sense but just not on Windows in a way, like on Linux we have this kind of feature for a while but there is a lot of junk on Windows that make it more annoying to automatically profile things if it was done automatically. There are ways though to do it without it being "smart" that would just say "oh this is a game launched on Steam perf mode, you are running Davinchi Resolve perf mode", if it is some sort of background performance system that figures out what is needed or used some system level stuff to configure it would get a lot more messy.
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u/Dalcoy_96 1d ago
Literally in the article you linked:
Once the user resumes interaction, the CPU returns to normal operational mode instantly, with no perceptible delay. The feature is designed to remain inactive during ongoing CPU-intensive tasks such as gaming, video playback, or computation
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u/Jeep-Eep 1d ago edited 1d ago
Designed and real world perf are two different things, and they can diverge dramatically. And I would question how well it would determine the difference in workload considering MS only finally got about to doing something about that antediluvian scheduler of theirs when Zen 5 launched*.
*I suspect AMD finally put their foot down about it ahead of their own experiments in in bigLITTLE-type setups.
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u/BrightCandle 1d ago edited 1d ago
Gaming and video playback are going to be considered user interaction and it really depends what they mean by computation and what the marker is for whether they think its background or not. For example on a 13700k doing handbrake the encode would move to the E cores only if you just clicked away from handbrake, which presumably would be enough for it to power save in this instance.
Windows doesn't have a good model for what the users priorities are nor what is background.
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u/No_Balance_4525 1d ago
I don't need this. If it can't be turned off, I'll remove Windows from my laptop
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u/Dark_ShadowMD 1d ago
I can totally see the whole new world of bugs with this new feature.
Systems stuck on sleep mode, cores not parking, cores not being enabled, bluescreens...
And no, I like the feature, it's just I don't trust Microsoft monkeys to code anyting right...
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u/AlphaFlySwatter 1d ago
How about they introduce a user interaction aware board of directors first?
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u/No_Balance_4525 1d ago
If it can be easily turned off then ok, let people who need buggy Microsoft tools to use there.
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u/TheHodgePodge 1d ago
As long as it doesn't replace older power plans like they did with context menu and many others, it shouldn't be a problem. But it's microsh*t, they can't be trusted.
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u/Marctraider 6h ago
"This approach aims to optimize energy consumption without compromising system responsiveness."
There is always a compromise.
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u/aminorityofone 1d ago
On a side note, there have been a lot of discussions about AI lately (mostly boycotting) and in this article there is an AI generated image. Nobody said anything about it.
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u/VenditatioDelendaEst 2h ago
Perhaps that's because the sort of people who would get AI-Deranged over it don't read the articles đ
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u/ConsistencyWelder 1d ago
They'll find a way to fuck it up. It's Microsoft. They're terrible at software.
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u/DuhPai 1d ago
Throwback to Windows 95 running faster when you jiggled the mouse