Laptop manufacturers often try to balance performance, battery life, and temperature at the device’s default settings. However, users do not always need to save battery because they are currently plugged in, and in default mode, the laptop still tries to reduce CPU and GPU performance to save battery, and that causes problems such as lagging games or running slow applications.
Biareview recently tested turning on high-performance mode on several laptops and found that most can increase performance by 10 to 30%. Of course, if your laptop is too weak, the above number is nothing and will not make your system as fast as high-end laptops. However, if your laptop has decent performance, the extra performance can be the difference between smooth gaming and laggy gaming, or if you use your laptop for rendering, 10 -30% extra performance sometimes saves hours of waiting time.
For example, on the MSI Prestige 14 laptop with the 10th generation Core i7-10710U CPU, Intel’s U series is a low-power chip line, so its performance cannot be too great. However, if you change the setting from ”Balanced” to ‘High Performance’, you will see a 10% increase in overall performance on benchmark results with PCMark 10. When encoding videos with HandBrake software, After switching to High-Performance mode, that laptop reduced processing time by 30%, which is a very attractive increase.
How to turn on “High Performance” mode on the laptop
Some laptops have their software to manage battery saving and high-performance modes, some even have separate buttons to switch between these two modes. Using separate software will usually optimize the laptop’s performance the most, but each laptop has different software, so combining it into one tutorial is impossible. Therefore, in this article, we only give the most common way on all laptops using Windows 10, which is to turn on “High Performance” mode using the Windows settings.
Step 1: Open Windows settings, you can do this by clicking the Start button and typing Settings.
Step 2: In Settings, click System
Step 3: In System, click Power and Sleep, then click Additional power settings.
Step 4: In the Power Options window that appears, click High Performance. If you don’t see this option, click the arrow circled in red in the image to display this option
After completing this step, you will notice an immediate increase in laptop performance — but don’t expect too much. If you know the name of the laptop you are using, type it into Google and access the manufacturer’s link to download specialized software, the laptop’s performance can increase a little more than using Windows mode. For example, with the DELL GAMING G3 15 3500 LAPTOP (70223130), after searching on Google, I was directed to the download page, where there is an Alienware OC Controls application that can manage the laptop’s high-performance mode better than the Windows default.
Changing this setting is not the same as overclocking your CPU or GPU. While overclocking also increases hardware performance, it’s a dangerous process that can damage your computer or even cause injury due to increased heat — especially on laptops.
Changing your laptop’s performance settings is completely safe and if you use the manufacturer’s software correctly, they have tested it very carefully. Of course, extra performance means the laptop generates more heat, and you may notice an increase in fan noise when using high-performance mode. If you are using the battery and not plugged in, you will see the battery drain much faster than normal.
Therefore, we only recommend that you switch to this mode if the battery is fully charged and kept plugged in. Some laptops will also automatically change settings to balanced mode when on battery or if battery life drops below a certain level. But it’s best if you can’t plug in a charger, you should check this setting and switch back to “balanced mode” to avoid losing power in the middle of work.
For gamers, if the game still lags after turning on high-performance mode, make sure you have installed the latest driver and choose to run the game with a separate card.