I unlocked Windows 11's hidden performance power plan, but I wouldn't enable it on every PC

Gaming has been Samarveer’s greatest passion, and the Literature graduate in him takes immense joy in dissecting games for their themes, messages, and impact. Samarveer holds a deep appreciation of gaming, and considers the platform to be the most immersive and impactful across all media. He can be found engaging with gaming communities online, always ready to debate the finer points of ray tracing or itching to write an 8-page collegiate thesis on any game that impacts him emotionally.

Windows 11 has never had any shortage of settings that promise to make your PC faster. Of course, anyone who has actually made their PC quicker knows that most of the truly consequential settings are buried pretty deep in registry edits and behind command lines. Power plans are a good example of the same.

Most users would dismiss Windows power plans as glorified battery-saving presets, but they really do influence how Windows balances power consumption and performance when it comes to different workloads.

Microsoft already gives users a handful of power profiles to choose from, but there's one option that isn't exposed in Windows 11's standard settings, and that's "Ultimate Performance." It may sound promising on paper, but it's only worthwhile if it makes a meaningful difference, which is exactly what I set out to find.

The different Windows power plans tweak tiny aspects of your system

Most of the changes a plan makes lie in the CPU

When you change Windows 11 power plan, the bulk of the changes come from the CPU's behavior. Power plans change how aggressively (or not) Windows manages power, wakes up processor cores, and responds to sudden workloads. By default, the "Balanced" power plan is absolutely more than enough for the bulk of users, and yes, that includes gamers running heavy AAA games. However, that doesn't mean that High or even the Ultimate power plans don't do anything at all.

The first distinction is processor performance scaling. On my system, Balanced allows more conservative scaling, while the performance-oriented plans permit the CPU to reach its full advertised 4.4GHz boost when needed. Minimum processor state is another matter: Balanced can drop to 0%, while Ultimate Performance keeps it at 100%. That doesn't mean your CPU consumes maximum power constantly, but it does reduce its freedom to downclock at idle.

Another crucial area of importance here is core parking. The Balanced plan waits until individual cores reach roughly 80% utilization before it lets the CPU unpark more cores, while the higher performance-focused plans bring that threshold down to around 65%, unparking cores quicker. They also tend to keep awakened cores available for longer, rather than parking them as soon as demand subsides. Obviously, the "Ultimate" performance plan disables core parking entirely, making the processor ready to go at a moment's notice.

The Ultimate Performance power plan is easy to unlock

A simple command line takes the shackles off the CPU

In order to unlock the "Ultimate Performance" power plan in your Power Options menu, you must first open Command Prompt. Run an elevated CMD by choosing to run it as administrator from the Start Menu, and input the following line of code into it:

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

With that done, simply reopen the Power Options settings in the Control Panel, and right beside Balanced and High Performance, you should now also see a power plan titled "Ultimate Performance." This is the High Performance with its gloves off.

You can even click on Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings to tweak individual aspects of the CPU behavior and other efficiency options, turning them on or off to customize your Ultimate power plan to your needs.

The Ultimate Performance plan is really meant for workstations, but it does have some real uses for those who work with large files and video editing software. Since the CPU goes from intense workloads to an idle state more frequently for such users, keeping the CPU active and pinned at maximum performance really does save a precious couple of seconds every time.

On the other hand, the Ultimate Performance power plan truly doesn't do much for gamers. You might notice a few quicker boots and loads, but outside of that, every performance difference mostly falls within the margin for error.

This power plan favors consistency over efficiency, pushing your CPU to stay alert rather than to merely sip power. In practice, it increases heat and idle consumption, but it does ensure the processor is always ready to deliver maximum performance the instant a demanding workload kicks in.

Gaming performance remained largely unchanged

Everything within the margin of error

With the Ultimate Performance power plan turned on, I tested four of the games I play the most on a weekly, if not daily basis. Between the four of them, I get all sorts of scenarios vis-à-vis CPU-bound and GPU-bound workloads. Fortnite and Cyberpunk 2077 are more CPU-bound titles out of the four, while the other remain GPU-heavy.

Fortnite was the only one where I actually saw any real benefit to the Ultimate Performance power plan. My 1% lows improved remarkably in Fortnite after turning off all power-saving features through my power plan, but in the rest of the games, nothing changed all that much.

Three out of the four games support DLSS Frame Generation, but I chose not to use that setting as it takes even more load off the CPU. This helped me see more clearly whether removing the idle power settings from the CPU helped overall performance. The result, sadly, was rather unimpressive in all three titles. Seeing as they are single-player titles, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, and Forza Horizon 5 are all GPU-bound. Here, the difference in my average FPS and 1% lows fell within the margin of error regardless of which power plan I used.

In Fortnite, however, which is heavily CPU-bound owing to hundreds of real-time player actions, building physics, and hundreds of network updates every minute, things went a little differently. Both my average FPS and 1% lows jumped remarkably. However, the average FPS jump from 101 FPS to 108 FPS didn't feel as different as the jump in the 1% lows.

Ultimate Performance really isn't for everyone

The downside is too much for laptops

If you're using a laptop, I'd stick with Balanced or configure High Performance to suit your workload. Ultimate Performance is great at minimizing power-saving compromises, but your notebook has a finite battery, limited cooling capacity, and absolutely no interest in turning itself into a portable space heater.

The Ultimate Performance plan does take its gloves off, sure, but it comes at a bit of a cost, too. Keeping processor cores active for longer and reducing idle power savings can increase heat, trigger more aggressive fan curves, and eat into battery life without delivering a meaningful performance uplift.

My advice? You don't really need an entirely new power plan to tweak individual behaviors. Windows 11 does give you plenty of control over each individual setting in your power plan, so you can just adjust processor power states through your existing plan's advanced options, wherever supported. It's better to experiment with those settings and see if they meaningfully improve your life instead of throwing every power-saving precaution out the window.

Desktop users have considerably less reason to worry about battery drain, and the electricity cost of a power plan alone is unlikely to transform your monthly bill. Ultimate Performance isn't a free upgrade, just waiting for you to take it, though. It's a set of trade-offs that makes sense only if and when your workload benefits from them.

Should you switch on Ultimate Performance in Windows 11?

Short answer? No. Long answer? Sure, but only if you're going to be playing ultra-competitive online-only titles, or engaging in significant CPU-bound work like running simulations, 3D rendering, or compiling large software projects. Even then, Windows has a way of managing resources so that you don't really need to add on the extra power draw and stress on your components.

Regardless, it's there for you to activate and use should you want to. At the very least, you can try it out in your games. If your gaming library consists mostly of single-player titles, though, you're better off saving the five minutes it will take you to run the command line.