In the Windows system, we can monitor active processes or programs through the Task Manager. If a process drags down the system, we can use the “End Task” function to close it. With the task manager, you have full control over your device and can tell you about your CPU, memory, GPU, or even network bandwidth.
In Windows 11 Build 22557, Microsoft is trying to pass an Efficiency Mode that allows users to limit resource allocation on a per-app basis. Ending the task is killing the process, which may cause some undesirable problems. And efficiency mode throttles the process and minimizes disruption to the foreground experience. To use this new feature, you need to right-click on any process and select this option, as shown in the screenshot below.
Decrease scheduling priority
On Windows, threads can be run according to their scheduling priority. According to Microsoft’s updated documentation, all threads have an assigned scheduling priority that ranges from zero (lowest priority) to 31 (highest priority).
Efficiency mode sets the base priority to “THREAD_PRIORITY_LOWEST” to ensure they [processes] can be preempted when necessary. According to the official documentation, this is done for “background processes, especially those that are processor-intensive”.
When you set multiple processes to consume fewer resources, Windows automatically assigns idle resources to higher priority processes based on the situation. “Low priority ensures that the process does not interfere with high-priority processes that the user is actively using,” Microsoft said.
Invoke EcoQoS
The second step in “efficiency mode” is to invoke EcoQoS. The term “EcoQoS” is a standard for Ecological Quality of Service (QoS) levels, first introduced in 2021 as an optional feature for developers who want to efficiently run certain processes of their applications to reduce power consumption. When used properly, EcoQoS can lead to extended battery life and better energy efficiency, reduced fan noise and improved thermal throttling.
This new QoS level is valuable for workloads that don’t have significant performance or latency requirements to always run in an energy-efficient manner,” Microsoft wrote in a document published last year.
When you enable efficiency mode for a process, Task Manager also triggers EcoQoS to ensure that process executes in the most power-efficient way possible. As a result, the processor will be able to run at a lower frequency to save power, improve UI responsiveness, and the thermal footprint of the CPU.
Benefit
As you can see in the image above, Microsoft has been able to improve the responsiveness of Windows 11 by 14% ~ to 76%. According to these documents, the following are the main benefits of integrating Efficiency Mode and EcoQoS into Task Manager.
- Allow users to manually enable efficiency mode (EcoQoS) instead of relying on application developers. Currently, a handful of apps like Microsoft Edge include built-in support for these improvements.
- Reduce CPU power consumption by up to 90%
- Reduce heat and fan noise.
- Improve the performance of concurrent workloads.
- Reduce thermal throttling.
- Focus on energy sustainability
Currently, Microsoft is focusing on CPU optimization because it only wants to reduce power consumption. In upcoming versions of Windows, you can expect similar technologies for other system resources, such as memory and even the GPU.