I always thought I had poked around every last corner of Windows, but it turns out my PC was keeping a secret. Like most people, I treated “High Performance” as the final boss of system speed, the setting you flip on to optimize Windows for gaming or heavy creative work and call it a day. What I did not realize is that Microsoft tucked away an even higher tier, initially meant for beefy workstation machines, and then hid it from the regular Windows 10 and 11 menus.
The mode is called Ultimate Performance, and it’s not just a louder version of the existing preset. It’s a separate power scheme engineered to smooth out the micro-latencies that appear when hardware constantly scales up and down to conserve energy.
Windows hides an ‘Ultimate Performance’ power plan
It’s designed to squeeze out every bit of speed
The Ultimate Performance plan is a built-in power scheme that Microsoft introduced in 2018 for high-end systems. This special mode goes a step further than the standard High Performance plan, removing many power-saving limits to let your hardware run at full throttle. For example, under Ultimate Performance, your CPU won’t downclock at idle; it stays at a maximum frequency at all times, eliminating even tiny delays when ramping up to full speed. Likewise, disks won’t spin down, and USB devices won’t enter low-power states, ensuring there’s no latency while components wake up. In theory, this means every bit of your PC’s performance potential is immediately available on demand.
So why does Windows act like this feature does not exist? Because, for most people, it shouldn’t. Microsoft hides Ultimate Performance on the majority of PCs by default, and shows it out of the box only on the Pro for Workstations edition of Windows 10 and 11. On regular Home or Pro systems, you have to go looking for it.
There’s a practical rationale behind this restraint. Running a system at peak power around the clock comes with trade-offs. Constant full-frequency operation increases energy consumption and heat output, which can quickly drain a laptop’s battery and place additional strain on internal components. For most people, the marginal gains in responsiveness don’t justify louder fans, higher temperatures, and reduced efficiency—especially when Windows’ balanced mode is already adept at pushing hardware to perform when the workload actually demands it.
I finally found the perfect balance between battery life and performance on a Windows laptop
You don’t have to compromise on performance to get good battery life.
Another reason Ultimate Performance stays hidden is that newer Windows 11 devices use a different power-management approach. Windows 11 still supports old-style power plans in the Control Panel, but on many newer laptops, you’ll only see the “Balanced” plan. This leaves you to wonder how to restore missing default power plans if you prefer the legacy options.
Enabling ‘Ultimate Performance’ mode is just a single command
But it made little difference in everyday use
Enabling the Ultimate Performance plan requires just one administrative command. Press Windows + X to open the Quick Link menu, then select Terminal (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin) depending on your Windows version. Once the elevated command window opens, type or paste this exact command: powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61 and press Enter. You should see a success message displaying a power scheme GUID—that’s your confirmation that Windows has unlocked the hidden plan.
Next, navigate to Power Options to activate it. Open the Control Panel (you can check one of the many ways to open the Control Panel), go to Hardware and Sound, then Power Options. You might need to click “Show additional plans” to expand the list. Ultimate Performance should now appear as an option. Select it, and the change takes effect immediately without requiring a restart.
With the plan unlocked, I switched over to it to see how my PC would behave. I noticed a few things. For one, when I checked CPU usage, I noticed the processor running at max clock speed even when idle, rather than dropping to a lower frequency. This wasn’t a surprise, because, as noted earlier, the whole point of Ultimate Performance is to eliminate the energy-saving lull periods. If you’re on a laptop, expect your device to run hotter, and definitely stay plugged in, as this mode will drain a battery incredibly fast (it’s basically the opposite of any Windows battery-saver tips or mode). In your case, on a desktop, power consumption might not be as critical. Still, you should expect your PC to use more electricity than before (and by extension, could contribute to a higher energy bill over time).
Now, what about the performance itself? I ran a few everyday tasks and some heavier workloads to gauge any improvements. For typical use (e.g., web browsing, launching apps, or even playing a game), I honestly didn’t notice any speed boost. Games ran with the same frame rates as before, since they already pushed my hardware to max under the standard High Performance plan. In processor-intensive tasks like video encoding, there might have been a slight reduction in completion time, but it was not a night-and-day difference. The Ultimate Performance plan mainly shaves off microseconds of latency here and there (for example, skipping the split-second delay when a CPU core turbo-boosts from an idle state). Unless you’re running a high-end workstation task that constantly juggles many small operations, you likely won’t notice a difference.
Ultimate, but not essential
After a few days of using my PC with Ultimate Performance enabled, I came to a clear conclusion. Yes, this hidden power plan does work as advertised — it forces your system into full-power mode at all times — but it’s not a magic turbo button for speed. My PC didn’t suddenly run faster; it just ran harder. The benefit in responsiveness was minor, while the drawbacks in efficiency (and potential wear and tear) were very real. I ultimately decided to keep the plan available for the rare times I might truly need maximum performance without any power management interference (perhaps during a critical video rendering session on a deadline). For day-to-day computing, though, I’ve switched back to a balanced approach.
