Windows 7 Micro stutter Fix - Core Parking

brandonwh64 · Feb 2, 2012

Hi Everyone

I just found a great fix to stop win7 parking the cores when Idle.

This is an aggressive power saving approach which makes the system feel sluggish and underpowered..

Who is affected
It only applies to Windows 7 X64 and X32 and only in systems using more than 2 physical CPU's and/or more than 2 "logical" cores - ie: Core i7's.

The Problem
Core Parking is a feature of Windows 7 that is causing rare performance problems. I don't notice it on my home i7 / Win7 system but some people are getting microstutters and odd behavior in certain programs. Without the following " tweak" you may see CPU spiking in your programs and Windows Task Manager - some CPU cores will be "turned off" / "parked" depending on load and they will be dynamically turned on or off and dynamically loaded up or down as the system deems necessary - the scope for glitches / pops / clicks / dropouts etc.... in such an environment is simply enormous. To the best of my knowledge, there is no known "switch" to turn it off - no utility I am aware of to "tweak" it off.

The Fix
- Go to Regedit
- Select Edit > Find... and find this key: "Specify the minimum number of unparked cores/packages allowed (in percentage)."
- Within this key, there is a value called: " ValueMax " This value represents the % number of cores the system will park
- Change the value of " ValueMax" to 0 so that, it matches " ValueMin "
- You will have to find the key a few times and repeat the process for each time it is found - the number of instances will depend on the number of power profiles in your system. To do this go back up to Edit > Find Next. (I had 3 instances of this key in my registry.)
- Do a full shutdown and power-off and cold-re-start.

This seems to work better.

SOURCE

Thanks guys in the BF3 clubhouse.

Sasqui · Feb 2, 2012

Cool tip. Surprised no BIOS exposes that setting, or prhaps it does in a different way?

brandonwh64 · Feb 2, 2012

Sasqui said:
Cool tip. Surprised no BIOS exposes that setting, or prhaps it does in a different way?

Its something windows 7 does to save some energy. This fix has been known to help anyone with HT shuttering issues in BF3

Sasqui · Feb 2, 2012

brandonwh64 said:
Its something windows 7 does to save some energy. This fix has been known to help anyone with HT shuttering issues in BF3

Yes, I knew that part, but there's a hardware/software layer that allows Win7 to do this, and my assumption is it's talking through the BIOS. Much like the power saving modes of old.

cadaveca · Feb 2, 2012

I made the changes, will check it out this afternoon.

First thing to report is that it did not affect idle temps at all.

brandonwh64 · Feb 2, 2012

cadaveca said:
I made the changes, will check it out this afternoon.

First thing to report is that it did not affect idle temps at all.

Nice! Please let us know how it works out for you!

_ALB_R3D X · Feb 2, 2012

Same here...Temps are normal
Gonna try BF3 in a few minutes

johnspack · Feb 2, 2012

Just tried this myself with winrar, and it does indeed increase performance by a fair bit. However there is an easier way, just one reg mod and you can set it in power options! 0% is fully enabled, and 100% and parking is fully disabled:

cadaveca · Feb 2, 2012

johnspack said:
Just tried this myself with winrar, and it does indeed increase performance by a fair bit. However there is an easier way, just one reg mod and you can set it in power options! 0% is fully enabled, and 100% and parking is fully disabled:
http://img.techpowerup.org/120202/CorePark.png

I already tried to make those adjsutments, and "Core Parking" still seemed to be enabled, as the power plan here on my system didn't list core parking in the power options.

I wonder why it shows in yours? Weird...

DRDNA · Feb 2, 2012

johnspack said:
Just tried this myself with winrar, and it does indeed increase performance by a fair bit. However there is an easier way, just one reg mod and you can set it in power options! 0% is fully enabled, and 100% and parking is fully disabled:
http://img.techpowerup.org/120202/CorePark.png

My power options did not change and I dont have any thing that looks like your screen shot.
Your screenie almost looks like windows is skinned to basic.?.

johnspack · Feb 2, 2012

You just need to use the one reg mod I showed, simply change the attribute from 1 to 0. Then it will show up in advanced power options.

DRDNA · Feb 2, 2012

johnspack said:
You just need to use the one reg mod I showed, simply change the attribute from 1 to 0. Then it will show up in advanced power options.

where is advanced power options located?

johnspack · Feb 2, 2012

Click "Change power settings" then "Change advanced power settings". Oh, and I didn't need a reboot for any of this, it worked right away.
Edit: and yes, I use classic interface, with classicshell ect....

DRDNA · Feb 2, 2012

johnspack said:
Click "Change power settings" then "Change advanced power settings". Oh, and I didn't need a reboot for any of this, it worked right away.
Edit: and yes, I use classic interface, with classicshell ect....

Ahhh...okay...now I see it...lol :toast:

Mine was set at 10% originally. Now its at 100%...

johnspack · Feb 2, 2012

Yep, mine was at 10 as well, when I put it to 100, my winrar throughput went up a good 25%...

LAN_deRf_HA · Feb 2, 2012

I did this awhile ago. Increased my gflops and did not increase power draw. What exactly is core parking supposed to accomplish because so far it just wastes performance.

Breathless · Feb 2, 2012

This is a great post. Thanks!

DRDNA · Feb 2, 2012

WOW right of the bat it has lowered my temp on my core 0 while folding with smp and v7!I always had core0 running a few degrees hotter but now its on par with all the rest of the cores! Hot damn nice! :toast:

cadaveca · Feb 2, 2012

LAN_deRf_HA said:
I did this awhile ago. Increased my gflops and did not increase power draw. What exactly is core parking supposed to accomplish because so far it just wastes performance.

"Core Parking" will fully disable and power down unused cores that support "Core Parking". It takes a moment or two to "wake" the "sleeping" core, which causes the performance loss. It will also shift workloads to active cores so that only the needed amount of cores are "woken" from the ultra-low-power state. Disabling Core Parking removes the Ultra-low power staes, having the cores ready for new work.

As far as I understand it, teh WIn7 kernel isn't able to fully support CoreParking right yet, so maybe that's why there is no differnce in idle states or power consumption. It's more than possible that the cores aren't actually "sleeping" in Win7, and are merely ignored for thread-dispatch.

_ALB_R3D X · Feb 2, 2012

Maybe it's me but I'm feelin a bit of smoothness in BF3...anyone else tried yet?

LifeOnMars · Feb 2, 2012

I'm crap with technobabble, would this encompass i5 2500k's as well?

cadaveca · Feb 2, 2012

maybe, but it seems to be more for INtel CPUs with HT. Give it a try and let us know; it's easy to reverse.

LifeOnMars · Feb 2, 2012

cadaveca said:
maybe, but it seems to be more for INtel CPUs with HT. Give it a try and let us know; it's easy to reverse.

I'll try anything for a performance increase

Whats the best indicator of any perfomance increase? Will it mean I can run Crysis? :laugh:

But seriously, which benchmark would show up any improvement?

cadaveca · Feb 2, 2012

things that are more core-instensive, liek winrar and such, should show the largest gains, but I seem to be noticing an effect in nearly everything. It might be a placebo effect, but even IE seems to load up faster.

DRDNA · Feb 2, 2012

SAME HERE! I should run some benches.

System Name	Senile
Processor	I7-4790K@4.8 GHz 24/7
Motherboard	MSI Z97-G45 Gaming
Cooling	Be Quiet Pure Rock Air
Memory	16GB 4x4 G.Skill CAS9 2133 Sniper
Video Card(s)	GIGABYTE Vega 64
Storage	Samsung EVO 500GB / 8 Different WDs / QNAP TS-253 8GB NAS with 2x10Tb WD Blue
Display(s)	34" LG 34CB88-P 21:9 Curved UltraWide QHD (34401440) FREE_SYNC*
Case	Rosewill
Audio Device(s)	Onboard + HD HDMI
Power Supply	Corsair HX750
Mouse	Logitech G5
Keyboard	Corsair Strafe RGB & G610 Orion Red
Software	Win 10

System Name	Senile
Processor	I7-4790K@4.8 GHz 24/7
Motherboard	MSI Z97-G45 Gaming
Cooling	Be Quiet Pure Rock Air
Memory	16GB 4x4 G.Skill CAS9 2133 Sniper
Video Card(s)	GIGABYTE Vega 64
Storage	Samsung EVO 500GB / 8 Different WDs / QNAP TS-253 8GB NAS with 2x10Tb WD Blue
Display(s)	34" LG 34CB88-P 21:9 Curved UltraWide QHD (34401440) FREE_SYNC*
Case	Rosewill
Audio Device(s)	Onboard + HD HDMI
Power Supply	Corsair HX750
Mouse	Logitech G5
Keyboard	Corsair Strafe RGB & G610 Orion Red
Software	Win 10

System Name	Red and Green,mean machine!
Processor	AMD RYZEN 7 5800X3D
Motherboard	Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro
Cooling	Arctic eSports Duo
Memory	16GB DDR4 Corsair 3600Mhz
Video Card(s)	Gigabyte RTX3080 Waterforce
Storage	Couple ssd , nvme etc
Display(s)	AORUS FI25F 240hz
Case	Cooler Master HAF X
Audio Device(s)	OnBoard
Power Supply	Thermaltake Toughpower 750W
Software	Win 11 64bit

System Name	System2 Blacknet , System1 Blacknet2
Processor	System2 Threadripper 1920x, System1 2699 v3
Motherboard	System2 Asrock Fatality x399 Professional Gaming, System1 Asus X99-A
Cooling	System2 Noctua NH-U14 TR4-SP3 Dual 140mm fans, System1 AIO
Memory	System2 64GBS DDR4 3000, System1 32gbs DDR4 2400
Video Card(s)	System2 GTX 980Ti System1 GTX 970
Storage	System2 4x SSDs + NVme= 2.250TB 2xStorage Drives=8TB System1 3x SSDs=2TB
Display(s)	1x27" 1440 display 1x 24" 1080 display
Case	System2 Some Nzxt case with soundproofing...
Audio Device(s)	Asus Xonar U7 MKII
Power Supply	System2 EVGA 750 Watt, System1 XFX XTR 750 Watt
Mouse	Logitech G900 Chaos Spectrum
Keyboard	Ducky
Software	Archlinux, Manjaro, Win11 Ent 24h2
Benchmark Scores	It's linux baby!

Processor	INTEL CORE I9-9900K @ 5Ghz all core 4.7Ghz Cache @1.305 volts
Motherboard	ASUS PRIME Z390-P ATX
Cooling	CORSAIR HYDRO H150I PRO RGB 360MM 6x120mm fans push pull
Memory	CRUCIAL BALLISTIX 3000Mhz 4x8 32gb @ 4000Mhz
Video Card(s)	EVGA GEFORECE RTX 2080 SUPER XC HYBRID GAMING
Storage	ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB 3D NAND NVMe,Intel 660p 1TB m.2 ,1TB WD Blue 3D NAND,500GB WD Blue 3D NAND,
Display(s)	50" Sharp Roku TV 8ms responce time and Philips 75Hz 328E9QJAB 32" curved
Case	BLACK LIAN LI O11 DYNAMIC XL FULL-TOWER GAMING CASE,
Power Supply	1600 Watt
Software	Windows 10

Windows 7 Micro stutter Fix - Core Parking

brandonwh64

Addicted to Bacon and StarCrunches!!!

Sasqui

brandonwh64

Addicted to Bacon and StarCrunches!!!

Sasqui

cadaveca

My name is Dave

brandonwh64

Addicted to Bacon and StarCrunches!!!

_ALB_R3D X

johnspack

Here For Good!

cadaveca

My name is Dave

DRDNA

johnspack

Here For Good!

DRDNA

johnspack

Here For Good!

DRDNA

johnspack

Here For Good!

LAN_deRf_HA

Breathless

DRDNA

cadaveca

My name is Dave

_ALB_R3D X

LifeOnMars

cadaveca

My name is Dave

LifeOnMars

cadaveca

My name is Dave

DRDNA

System Name	Obelisc
Processor	i7 3770k @ 4.8 GHz
Motherboard	Asus P8Z77-V
Cooling	H110
Memory	16GB(4x4) @ 2400 MHz 9-11-11-31
Video Card(s)	GTX 780 Ti
Storage	850 EVO 1TB, 2x 5TB Toshiba
Case	T81
Audio Device(s)	X-Fi Titanium HD
Power Supply	EVGA 850 T2 80+ TITANIUM
Software	Win10 64bit

System Name	Bad Moon Ryzen
Processor	Ryzen 5 5600X
Motherboard	Asrock B450M Pro4-F
Cooling	Vetroo V5
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 32Gb (8gb x 4) 3200 MHz DDR 4
Video Card(s)	GTX 970
Storage	Samsung 860 Evo 1Tb, Samsung 860 Evo 500Gb,WD Black 8Tb, WD Blue 2Tb
Display(s)	Gigabyte G24F-2 (180Hz Freesync) & 4K Samsung TV
Case	Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact w/Dark Tempered Glass
Audio Device(s)	Onboard
Power Supply	MSI MPG A850GF (850w)
VR HMD	Rift S