Add option to disable CPU cores in the BIOS

[fahdriyami]

Just like on desktop PCs, please add an option to disable CPU cores on the Ally. Many games (especially lighter games) do not need more than 4 cores. It would great if there was an option to disable cores in the BIOS. This could prolong battery life without much of an impact on performance.

[Gamdevguy66]

Agreed. The custom BIOS is nice, but I’d really like to see a fully fleshed out version with full control over the hardware. 

[BBB]

Disabling 4 CPU cores will give us much better performance. Current drivers always push CPU to max clocks even if real CPU usage is below 10%. GPU is starved to death and use lowest possible clocks. In games I see something like that:

CPU: 3300-3500MHz (real usage 10%)

GPU: 800-1000 MHz (real usage 99-100%)

Sometimes for few minutes Windows lower CPU to 2 GHz  which allow GPU to use more power. GPU go up to 2.2 GHz and performance in games is 50% better. But this is very rare and after few minutes Windows return to previous settings and max CPU clocks to 3.3 GHz and lower GPU clocks below 1 GHz

If we can disable 4 CPU cores then CPU will require 50% less power so more power will go to GPU. This will give us much better performance in nearly every game. All PC games are designed for 4 core CPU which is most popular configuration on Steam

[Murph_9000]

---

@BBB wrote:

…

If we can disable 4 CPU cores then CPU will require 50% less power so more power will go to GPU. This will give us much better performance in nearly every game. All PC games are designed for 4 core CPU which is most popular configuration on Steam

---

That's not how CPU power consumption works.  Idle cores do not use anything like the power consumed by active cores, especially on modern CPUs where the clocks boost on a per-core basis.  Some power would be saved by completely disabling cores, but it would only ever be a very small saving.

You can monitor the per-core clocks and per-core power consumption in HWiNFO64, if you want to see it in operation.

[BBB]

We need lower energy consumption of CPU. This is only way to give more power to GPU. I disabled CPU boost in Windows 11 power manager. This simple change give me more fps in games. Just because my GPU have 200 Mhz higher clock. This show that currently GPU is starved to death. If you run game Uncharted you will see another proof. Sometimes game use high CPU clock 3.3 GHz and GPU is clocked at 1 GHz. Sometimes CPU is clocked at 1.8 GHz and GPU at 2.2 GHz. Both use equal TDP but second is 40% faster in game. Games don't need fast CPU clocks. They want fast GPU clock. But it is hard to force Windows to limit maximum CPU clock. I tried to use regedit to limit CPU max frequency to 2.2 GHz but those register settings are ignored by Windows. 

Asus should give us some options to limit CPU usage. Disable some cores, limit max CPU frequency or something like that. This will give us much better performance in games 

[ORthx]

For now, disabling cpu boost via power plan is the only option. But hopefully something like this will be added to AC.

[2e32erf4g2wraea]

you can use the task manager in windows to set which and how cores programs run on have you tried that yet.

[fahdriyami]

Setting affinity is not the same as disabling cores.

[djvirus84_H2O]

I don't see it in the settings, I tried both bios 317 and bios 319.

[exablack]

Upvote, We need the option to disable 2 cores at least; that way, Silent 9w should run far better (25% power availability)... some indies and 2D games runs amazing on 4 cores, and would have 50% more power availability