High Precision Event Timer

[Carfax]

HPET is High Precision Event Timer. It's exactly that..
It can be used by software or the os for very accurate timing, however when it's "ON/Enabled" then windows will use it as the main clock source instead of the other options like the cpu TSC (time stamp counter).

The HPET can provide more precise timing, however the OS has to reference it via a memory address, or I think the HPET can raise a interrupt,
so therefore it's slower.

The TSC may be less precise, however it's a register in the CPU so this is the fastest possible way to access a clock source.

Great explanation dude, thanks If the TSC runs from the CPU register, then that could definitely explain the performance increase I'm seeing..

BTW, I opened up a similar thread on Nvidia forums and some of the replies are interesting.

Disabling it is a great tip. I couldn't figure out why my DPC latency was so high before. It shouldn't cause high latency, though... :\ Needs fixing by EVGA.

Do you have an Nvidia card? It's possible that Nvidia drivers may have issues with HPET.

Carfax can you run some benches to see how much difference it makes? Say Vantage and 03?

I'm waiting for my monitor to return from repair before I start running benchmarks. It's supposed to be here tomorrow, so if I have time, I'll run them then..

I can run some Everest benchmarks to see if there are any differences in bandwidth and latency in the mean time however..