Core parking on Windows Seven

[Pokerface]

Windows 7 home 64, andressergio.

[Arcanum]

Anyone having problems with turning core parking off please follow the instructions closely:

Just create a text file, copy paste the code here and save it as e.g. unpark.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583]
"ValueMax"=dword:00000000

The important thing here is to apply the tweak to CurrentControlSet, which is not the same ControlSet001 or ControlSet002.
Pokerface, I think your screenshot shows the tweak in ControlSet001.
After changing it to 0 in CurrentControlSet, reboot and core parking should be turned off.
Hope this helps

[Sailindawg]

@arcanum

I did the reg tweak as described by both you and the article. Once I saw the section to change core parking under the Power section of Control Panel and set that to 0% to turn off core parking. I figured I was done.

I rebooted and turned on Resource Monitor. In idle state, the 4 physical cores were unparked. The logical cores (hyperthreading) were parked.

I took the most CPU intensive game I have, ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead, ran an internal benchmark in windowed mode to watch the Resource Monitor.

Before the action began, the logical cores were parked, the physical cores were active. Once the 3d action began, all cores became active. Core 7, a logical core would bounce between active & parked. It was occasionally loaded to ~ 25%.

All 4 physical cores were active through out. 3 of the 4 logical cores were very active as well.

I'd say that because my physical cores never parked, the tweak prevents those cores from parking. The tweak also seemed to make consistent use of hyperthreading cores as well.

I also went back to registry, per Andressergio's posts, and changed the max parking value to 0 from 64 (hex for 100%?). It still worked the same. That tweak just seems to reset the upper limit of the available ranges. That entry was under Control Set, Control Set 01 & Control Set 02. The original edit in Control Set seems to open the hidden feature for the Control Panel / Power applet.

That's how I see it. Please correct me if I'm missing something about this reg edit.

Regards.

[Pokerface]

Anyone having problems with turning core parking off please follow the instructions closely:


The important thing here is to apply the tweak to CurrentControlSet, which is not the same ControlSet001 or ControlSet002.
Pokerface, I think your screenshot shows the tweak in ControlSet001.
After changing it to 0 in CurrentControlSet, reboot and core parking should be turned off.
Hope this helps

I doubled checked CurrentControlSet and still have the same cores parked.

[Leeghoofd]

Nice writeup only thing that bothers me is I can't find, at first glance, any credit to the one that discovered this bug or feature of Win7...

[Arcanum]

@ Sailindawg, Pokerface

Well, that's certainly weird, only thing I could possibly add is to try and undo the ControlPanel feature, that is - to make it hidden again by changing Attributes value.
From my experience I got the impression that changing both ValueMax to 0 + Attributes to 1 (to unhide in option in CP) and then changing the value in CP seemed to undo the tweak for me.
I now have CP option hidden, ValueMax on 0 and it is indeed working with 0 parked cores in PerfMon, that's on an i7 920. Other than that I'm pretty much clueless as to why it's not working

[Craftyman.]

u searched the reg ? from what i understood this is on all HT processors

Don't have HT on my i5 750, but will give it a look anyway, just in case. Thanks .

[Sailindawg]

@ Sailindawg, Pokerface

Well, that's certainly weird, only thing I could possibly add is to try and undo the ControlPanel feature, that is - to make it hidden again by changing Attributes value.
From my experience I got the impression that changing both ValueMax to 0 + Attributes to 1 (to unhide in option in CP) and then changing the value in CP seemed to undo the tweak for me.
I now have CP option hidden, ValueMax on 0 and it is indeed working with 0 parked cores in PerfMon, that's on an i7 920. Other than that I'm pretty much clueless as to why it's not working

I wouldn't say that it's not working, but at idle, are all of your cores , both physical & logical, unparked by the resource monitor?

EDIT:

I went into the registry, undid Addressergios edits and put the Value Max Range to 64 (100%), leaving the original reg tweak alone. I went to Comtrol Panel, Power Options, set the core parking to 100%, rebooted and now all cores are unparked.

[madcho]

any one can give some "results" for FXs ?

[quattro_]

I went to Comtrol Panel, Power Options, set the core parking to 100%, rebooted and now all cores are unparked.

you mean 0% right ?

[Arcanum]

I went into the registry, undid Addressergios edits and put the Value Max Range to 64 (100%), leaving the original reg tweak alone. I went to Comtrol Panel, Power Options, set the core parking to 100%, rebooted and now all cores are unparked.

Great, glad you got it worked out And yes, with only ValueMax on 0, without Control Panel, all my cores, even HT, are unparked at idle.
I think we both experienced the same thing but in the opposite way: CP setting messing with registry setting and other way around.

Seems that only registry should be changed OR control panel should be changed, and not both at the same time, else the tweak doesn't work?
Could you recheck the ValueMax number in CurrentControlSet now? Would be useful to sort this out so other people don't run into same problem

[Pokerface]

I can't find core parking in the power options.

[Sailindawg]

you mean 0% right ?

Check this out:

100% Setting for Core Parking




0% Setting for Core Parking




Go Figure!! I don't have time at moment to look in registry at original reg edit. At any rate, I've unparked all core for the moment!!

@Arcanum

The max value was set back to what is was after the original Control Set reg edit, as outlined in the third ( ?) paragraph of the original article by the Czech group. I set the max range value back to 64 (hex value). As you can see from my screenshots, a 100% value unparked the cores. The screenshots were taken at idle. Under load, the cores remain unparked

I need to go back and read what the Czech group did because I seem to have the opposite of how they described the settings. Either that or something was lost in the Czech to English translation of the article.

Further, the Czech reg edit enabled the core parking option under the Power Options applet.

[Arcanum]

Ok, I haven't seen the Czech group article, only the on the Italian xtremehardware.it, did you mean that one perhaps or I misunderstood something?

Either way, the xtremehardware article says, in short: Control Panel core parking 100% = core parking disabled = ValueMax 0.

So your result is in line with article actually, cause it they say the CP description is wrong and 100% disables parking, your result mirrors this.

The result should be identical if CP tweak is removed and only ValueMax 0 is applied, because it's the same setting. This is also in line with article and it's the method I used and it worked.

@Pokerface
Sorry, I'm out of ideas, other than suggesting to remove all tweaks (CP & ValueMax) and just try applying one of them again, with reboots in between.

[G0ldBr1ck]

I have went in and manualy changed ValueMax to 0 in all 3 locations and it works great. Thanks for the info.

[STEvil]

What power profile are you guys running? Might be each of you has a different one active.

[UZ7]

What power profile are you guys running? Might be each of you has a different one active.

I did mine via registry but my power option is on Balanced since I have EIST running so it downclocks my CPU when on idle. (If I keep it on high it will keep my oc'd frequency).

[HelixPC]

This is not recommended for gaming, got BSOD on several games, turned it back to default and everything is fine now.

[Sailindawg]

Thanks Arcanum for the explanation. I read some of the Italian article, then clicked the link to the Czech group and got as far as the registry edit. I came to the conclusion that there were two ways of accomplishing this tweak as we swapped comments.

Thanks again!!

[PatRaceTin]

nice find

[TEDY]

is this only for AMD or INTEL I5 2500K too?

[Pokerface]

No worries Arcanum, thanks everyone for helping.

[Sailindawg]

This is not recommended for gaming, got BSOD on several games, turned it back to default and everything is fine now.

Helix, you've got something else going on there affecting stability. All this tweak does is change how win 7 / 8 manages the cpu cores. Parking is somewhat of a power saving / server based option. On a desktop, I want all cores available for use, not left idle.

[aznsniper911]

Helix, you've got something else going on there affecting stability. All this tweak does is change how win 7 / 8 manages the cpu cores. Parking is somewhat of a power saving / server based option. On a desktop, I want all cores available for use, not left idle.

I am not sure... I have similiar experiences but my crashes don't happen when I play games on my computer but at random. I know my computer has been rock solid for 6 months and after disabling core parking, I have been experiencing crashes every couple of hours.

[Sailindawg]

I am not sure... I have similiar experiences but my crashes don't happen when I play games on my computer but at random. I know my computer has been rock solid for 6 months and after disabling core parking, I have been experiencing crashes every couple of hours.

That's interesting AZ, what version Win 7 are you running & how did you do the registry edit?