How to enable the Ultimate Performance power plan in Windows

Updated Nov 7, 2026, 9:43 AM EST Brady Gavin is a passionate writer, tech aficionado, and a programmer at heart. He enjoys writing programs, tech articles, and tearing apart electronics and putting them back together again. When he's not writing feverishly in a cafe, you can find him with his toes in the sand, soaking up the sun at the beach. Microsoft's "Ultimate Performance" power scheme — introduced in Windows 10 Creators Update — is built upon the High-Performance power scheme but strips away fine-grained power management to reduce latency. Here's why you probably don't need it, and how to turn it on anyway. Sourcing/credibility note: Data on power plan behavior, C-state latency, and battery performance thresholds was verified against Microsoft's powercfg documentation and independent hardware benchmarks for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Is Ultimate Performance Actually Worth It? It fixes micro-stutters, not frame rates The Ultimate Performance plan eliminates the polling of hardware to see if it needs more juice and keeps your CPU cores active. In theory, this reduces the micro-latency associated with C-states and core parking. C-states are power-saving states your CPU enters when idle. When a game demands instant attention, the CPU must wake from these states, causing a tiny delay. Ultimate Performance forces the CPU to stay awake, removing that wake-up latency. The real-world benefit isn't a raw FPS boost. Instead, you get frame-time consistency, which means fewer micro-stutters during heavy loads. While you may be thinking this would be great for gaming rigs, don't get your hopes up. Modern CPUs like the Ryzen 9 9950X3D or Ryzen 7 7800X3D often perform better on the standard Balanced plan because Windows handles core parking more intelligently than a static power plan can. Your NVMe drive makes it redundant The primary technical difference between Ultimate Performance and High Performance is a single registry tweak: the "Turn off hard disk after" timeout. Ultimate Performance sets this to 0 (never), while High Performance uses a 20-minute timeout. Since NVMe SSDs don't spin down, this setting does absolutely nothing for your storage speed. You're paying a power penalty for a feature that only benefits older HDD-based systems. Laptops face a thermal wall, not a power wall Because of this constant power draw, machines that operate on battery power don't get this option by default. However, there's a critical nuance: on battery, Ultimate Performance is actually *less* aggressive than High Performance regarding energy performance preference (50 vs. 0). The real danger isn't just battery drain; it's thermal throttling. Laptops struggle to dissipate the constant heat, forcing the CPU to downclock faster than it would under standard management. The Ultimate Performance plan improves speed on systems where hardware continually goes to and from an idle state. But when you're running a game, all your hardware already works together to populate the environment around you. The only real improvement might come upon initial startup, and you might only see a boost of a couple of frames per second. However, if you are running video editing or 3D design software that are putting occasional heavy loads on your hardware, you might see more of an improvement. There is an important caveat here. Enabling this plan will increase the amount of power your system consumes, so if you do plan on using this profile on your laptop, make sure you are plugged in at all times. How to Enable the Ultimate Performance Power Plan Hit Windows+I to open the Settings app and then click the "System" category. On the System page, click the "Power & Sleep" tab on the left. On the right, click the "Additional Power Settings" link under the "Related Settings" section. In the window that pops up, click "Show Additional Plans" and then click the "Ultimate Performance" option. If you're using a laptop, this option may not appear under this section. You'll need the command line method below. What to do if you don't see the Ultimate Performance plan On some systems (mostly on laptops, but also on some desktops), you might not see the Ultimate Performance plan in your settings app. If you don't, you can add it with a quick Command Prompt or PowerShell command. The command is the same for either shell, so use whichever one you want. You'll need to open the Command Prompt or PowerShell with administrative privileges. For Command Prompt, hit Start, type "cmd" into the search box, right-click the Command Prompt result, and choose "Run As Administrator." For PowerShell, hit Windows+X and choose the "Windows PowerShell (Admin) option." At the prompt, type (or copy and paste) the following command and then hit Enter: powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61 Here's the step most guides miss: duplicating the plan doesn't automatically switch to it. You must apply it with a second command: powercfg -setactive e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61 Once you run that, the plan is active. You can verify it in Power Options, and your system will now prioritize latency over power efficiency. If you already have the Power Options window open, you might have to close and reopen it before you see the plan appear, but it should be there. If you don't want to see the plan anymore, you can remove it from the Settings app. First, switch to a different plan. If you try to delete a plan you're currently using, you can run into errors. Next, click the "Change Plan Settings" link to the right of the plan and then click "Delete This Plan." The Ultimate Performance plan is only really useful in specific cases, but it can make a difference if you're trying to squeeze every last bit out of your system.