Quick CPU
Latest Version: 4.0.0.0 - Released: 9/22/2021
Quick CPU is a program that was designed to fine-tune and monitor important CPU and System parameters such as CPU Temperature (Package and Core Temp), CPU Performance, Power, Voltage, Current, Core Parking, Frequency Scaling, System Memory, Turbo Boost, C-States, Speed Shift FIVR Control as well as making other adjustments. Below you can find information about the way this application works and how to interpret application data and settings as well as modify and monitor other critical system parameters.
CPU Performance and power consumption
Back in a day, most computers were desktop machines with the main goal for the hardware, to offer absolute best performance and there was no real need for technologies such as SpeedStep, Turbo Boost etc.
However, in the modern world, power consumption sometimes takes a higher priority than performance output. Considering significant change in technology and expectations from the hardware, CPU's have gotten a lot of new features such as TurboBoost, SpeedStep, Hyper-Threading and individual core state/s that help to reduce power consumption and heat. Even though these are all positive changes, it sometimes creates a situation where an end user is not getting top performance when it is required (delayed performance boostboost). This can be caused by many hard to predict factors, such as system state, availability, CPU state, heat and many many more. This application was made to provide help in controlling such factors and reduce the effect of degrading performance when possible. Many features mentioned above will be described in greater details in the description below, so if you are interested read on ...
If your system has Intel CPU code name Skylake or greater with HWP (Intel Speed Shift) enabled by default, please follow the link below to find out more about the performance adjustment details and differences Performance adjustment on HWP (Intel Speed Shift) enabled systems
CPU Core Parking
CPU Core parking is a feature that was introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2. The processor power management (PPM) engine and the scheduler work together to dynamically adjust the number of cores that are available to run threads. The PPM engine chooses a minimum number of cores for the threads that will be scheduled. Cores that are parked generally do not have any threads scheduled, and they will drop into very low power states when they are not processing interrupts, DPCs, or other strictly affinitized work. The remaining cores are responsible for the remainder of the workload. Core parking can potentially increase energy efficiency during lower usage.
The problem with Windows way of core parking is lack of flexibility since by default you are given very few options for setting Core parking index on your machine
The functionality of this application allows for you to control the number of CPU cores that need to be enabled or disabled (or you can simply enable all the cores at all times, see explanations on how it works below) based on your personal requirements, also now by looking at CPU graph you can tell if the specific core is enabled or disabled. This information is also available in the CPU performance tab under “Enabled cores” and “Parked cores”. This is real time info, so you don’t have to press the “Refresh” button to find out the current status.
Here's an example of how core parking actually works and the meaning of an index number:
Let's say we have a CPU with total of 6 cores (including logical) this will be 100% of our CPU power, where each core will represent about ~ 17% (100 / 6 = 16.6 ~17). Now for example we would like that 4 cores out of 6 to never be parked by the OS regardless of the load. In this case we set the number to 68% (17 * 4 = 68). This will tell the OS that it can only park 2 cores out of 6. For example, if we set the number to a 100% we are basically telling the OS that NONE of our CPU cores can be parked and they should function at all times with full performance (see the pictures below), and in the opposite case scenario if we set the number to 0% or close to that, OS will be able to park any number of cores (don't forget to press the "Apply" button when you are setting the number). I hope this'll help explaining how it works.
Frequency scaling
CPU frequency scaling is a feature that enables the operating system to scale CPU frequency up or down to try and match supply to demand, delivering CPU performance when necessary or saving energy when possible. Similar to Core Parking OS is trying to scale CPU frequency dynamically based on the system load. The index for this control works similar to Core parking. On specific detail about the frequency scaling is that even if you set an index to 100% it’ll increase (and keep) the frequency up to the CPU base frequency level, and still use dynamic scaling for any extra performance
You can see an example in the image below where frequency scaling is set to 100% and the OS is keeping CPU frequency as close to its base (2.6 GHz in this specific example) as possible at all times. However, you can see that during heavy system loads CPU can spike higher than its base frequency thanks to ‘Turbo Boost’ technology. The good news is that you can go above the base frequency levels and keep your CPU close to it’s Maximum possible frequency thanks to Intel Turbo Boost and AMD Turbo CORE technologies. And that’s what the next section is about.
Turbo boost
During the normal system load CPU in your system operates at a standard clock speed (which indicates its overall performance). In fact, if some heavy lifting is required (considering power usage) Turbo Boost kicks in increasing CPU clock frequency for the duration of the task. By setting TurboBoost index to its maximum value CPU will try to provide performance greater than the performance level corresponding to the Processor base frequency at all times.
Intel Turbo Boost and AMD Turbo CORE technologies are features that allow processors to achieve additional performance when it is most useful (that is, at high system loads). Basically it raises CPU operating frequency (as well as performance) in a dynamic (non deterministic) way.
Here’s what Intel states about their turbo boost technology:
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.01 accelerates processor and graphics performance for peak loads, automatically allowing processor cores to run faster than the rated operating frequency if they’re operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits. Whether the processor enters into Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 and the amount of time the processor spends in that state depends on the workload and operating environment.
Performance hint
Performance index is an operating system feature that enables an end user to specify how much processor should favor energy savings over maximum performance. This feature was introduced in Windows 10 OS and will not be available on earlier versions.
C-State Residency (Intel)
Important: C-State Residency configuration settings are saved on the actual CPU (hardware registers). This is not an OS configuration. Please do it with caution.
Processor C-states are idle power saving states and during all the C-state/s (other than C0) the processor is idle, meaning that nothing is executing. C0 can be considered as an idle power state, meaning it is the non-idle state when the core is actually executing instructions.
Core idle states - How It works
Each core has several idle states, C0, C1, C3 etc ... After all hardware threads supported by a core have executed HALT instruction (instruction which halts CPU/unit until the next external interrupt is fired) core transitions to the first non iddle state C1. Now that the core is in C1, the coprocessor's power management (don't mistake with the OS power manager) routine needs to figure out whether it is worthwhile to shut the core down further and drop it into a next C-state. In which case, further parts of the core are shut down and power gated.
On the images below (see aplication footer) you can observe the percentage of time CPU spends in the specific C-State supported by the CPU.
| C-State | Description |
|---|---|
| C0 | At least one hardware thread within the core is executing some task. In this state core stays active. |
| C1 | All four hardware threads within the core finish their tasks. They all execute HALT instruction. At this point the core is clock-gated |
| C2 | Can also be considered as a transition state. Core clock is gated, Interrupts are not served. |
| C3 | Sometimes referred as a sleep state. In this state the processor might not be keeping its cache coherent, internal clock is off |
| C6 and up | Deep power down state |
Power Plan Management
The following section will provide a short summary of features and functionality related to the Power Plan Management application form.
Power Plan Management consists of two main sections:- Power Plan Settings
- Power Plan Management
Power Plan Settings Settings: this section lists all the settings that can be found in the selected power plan and provides the following features:
- Modify Power Plan Settings
- Setting search
- Data Export
- Data Aggregation
- And more ...
Power Plan Management this section allows an end user to view and manage system power plans available on the computer, and provides the following features:
- Activate Power Plan
- Delete Power Plan
- Import Power Plan
- Export Power Plan
- Reset All Plans
- And more ...
For more information about Power Plan Management features please visit the following page: Windows Power Plan Management
Advanced CPU Settings (INTEL)
All the features presented on the Advanced CPU Settings form are CPU dependent and will or will not be available depending on your CPU model. Another factor that can affect the availability of a particular setting is the fact that it’s not locked by your system BIOS
Remember that all of these settings are not OS settings and will be stored directly on your CPU hardware registers, that being said, make sure you know what you are doing and perform it with caution.
For more information about all the features please visit the following pages:
Program Features
- Per-core performance graph indicator
- Real time counter to display number of active vs parked cores
- CPU Core Parking settings
- CPU Frequency Scaling settings
- CPU Turbo Boost settings
- Hardware sensors and adjustable settings
- C-State Residency
- Core Clock Frequency
- CPU Utilization
- CPU Temperature
- CPU Power and Voltage
- FIVR Control
- System Power output
- System Tray notification
- Advanced system Power Plan management
- Changes are applied on the fly. NO NEED TO RESTART
Application Charts
The Quick CPU application has several chart controls located on the left and the right side of the application. Charts on the right side of the application are split between different panels depending on their functionality. NOTE: all the panels used for the application charts are DOCKABLE and can be rearranged, hidden, docked, undocked, floated, or hidden depending on the user preferences.
Essential CPU data chart panel
This chart control shows data for four different CPU indicators:
- CPU Temperature
- CPU Temperature for Distance To Tj Max (Available for Intel and AMD Ryzen CPUs)
- CPU Load
- CPU Clock Speed
The charts listed above have the following options:
- Chart history: By default the application will store 20 minutes of historic data for each chart indicator (temperature, distance to Tj Max, load,clock). You can access this data by scrolling the chart to the left by using the scroll bar at the bottom of the chart control. The amount of time representing historic data can be modified by going to the Options menu and choosing the CPU Chart Settings option. Use Maximum time range for historical data option to set a specific number of minutes for how long the chart will keep the historic data accessible.
- Chart zoom and visible data range: By default an end user can see one minute range of real time data for all three indicators. However, the time window for real time data can be modified (set to lower or the higher amount of time) by hovering over any of the chart indicators and using your mouse wheel or a mouse pad to zoom in or out of the chart’s visible data. Once you have chosen the time frame for real time data, you need to move the scroll bar at the bottom of the chart back to the very right position in order to see the updates for data in real time.
- Chart cross line indicator: Each chart has its own cross-line indicator to view the chart data value for a specific time. This indicator can be seen by hovering the mouse over one of the charts. However, if you want to see combined data values for all the charts at the same time, you can do the following: go to Option menu - choose CPU Chart Settings - set Combine charts cross line indicator to YES in General settings.
NOTE: that in order to see real time chart data, the chart scroll bar has to be moved to the very right position. When the scroll bar is located elsewhere (center position for example) the application will assume that you are accessing historical chart data.
CPU data distribution chart panel
This panel has several different charts. The visibility of each chart will depend on the CPU type.
Available Charts
- Load distribution - shows how even is the utilization for each CPU core (utilized percentage of core’s total processing capacity).
- Temperature distribution - shows how evenly CPU temperature is distributed among all the cores.
- Clock distribution - shows how evenly CPU frequency is distributed among all the cores.
- Power distribution - shows how evenly CPU power is distributed among all the cores.
Every chart control shows an average distribution data for each CPU core over the configurable time frame window which is 20 minutes by default (or less if the application has been running for less than 20 minutes).
Each bar on the chart represents a specific CPU core. The actual time frame window can be configured by going to: Options -> CPU chart settings -> Maximum time range for charts average data. For example if the time range is set to 5 minutes the application will be calculating average value for each CPU core for the last 5 minutes. Each chart supports hover-over option in order to view details
CPU workload delegation chart panel
This panel has a CPU Workload Delegation chart that shows the average workload for each CPU core over the configurable time frame window which is 20 minutes by default (or less if the application has been running for less than 20 minutes). By using this chart, an end user can observe how workload is delegated among different CPU cores by the OS. This chart is different from the Load distribution chart in a way that the Load distribution chart shows an average core utilization (what percentage of total core processing capacity has been utilized) where CPU Workload Delegation chart shows percentage of workload that was delegated to each CPU core by the OS.
For more information about Application Charts and Chart Options please visit the following page: Application Charts and Chart Settings
Dockable Panels
Starting from version 4.0.0.0 some of the application functionality will be implemented using dockable panels. This feature will add more flexibility and viewing options to an end user. Each panel can be individually rearranged, hidden, visible, docked, auto-hidden or completely undocked from it’s parent form. By using a mouse an end user can drag each panel to a chosen position within the dockable area which will be highlighted by the application. Each panel has a set of controls on the top, similar to a normal window these controls can be used to close, dock/undock or auto hide the panel. Once the layout for one or more panels has been modified it will be saved on the application exit and restored back on application start, this option can be enabled or disabled by checking the following item: Panel menu -> Save panel layout on application exit. The original panel layout can be restored at any time by clicking on the Reset panel layout menu item under Panel menu. An end user can use a Panel visibility menu item under the Panel menu to view or set visibility options for each individual panel.
System Tray Notification
System tray notification dialog can be configured by going to: Options menu -> System tray notification settings
Depending on the system the following options are available:
- Notification color: the color (there) of notification dialog
- Auto hide seconds: specifies the number of seconds after which the dialog will be auto-hidden (unless it was pinned by the user)
- Show TjMax distance sensor: adds the ability for supported platforms to show or hide distance to TjMax temperature from the notification area
- Show power sensors: adds the ability for supported platforms to show or hide power sensors from the notification area
- Show memory usage in %: shows available, used and committed memory in relative % value vs an actual value in GB
- Show clean memory button: adds the ability to show/hide clean memory button from the system tray dialog
- Show notification: adds the ability to completely Disable system tray notification
Prerequisites: This application requires .NET Framework 4.6.1 to be installed on your machine. In case you don’t have it yet, you can download it from the Microsoft site:
.NET Framework 4.6.1 Web Installer
.NET Framework 4.6.1 Web Installer
Package:
64 bit OS Installer:QuickCpuSetup-4.0.0.0-x64
32 bit OS installer:QuickCpuSetup-4.0.0.0-x32
NOTE: Versions prior to 3.1.0.0 were compiled to target both platforms x64 and x32 however, even on the x64 platform the app was running as a 32 bit process. Now if you do choose to install 64 bit version of the app please do manual uninstall of any versions prior to 3.1.0.0.
Current version 4.0.0.0
Release date: 9/22/2021
Compiled for: .NET 4.6.1
Tested on platforms: Win7 x64-en SP 1, Win8 x64-en, Win8.1 x64-en, Win10 x64-en
Send your suggestions to: support@coderbag.com
Release history
About Our Software
Enhance and monitor system performance, customize favorite settings and more…
