Surprising Observation! HPET On vs. Off

[FPSMaster]

Recently I dived deep into the whole Windows Tweaker scene. I was going trough alot of Forums with People claiming that there are Tweaks that can have a big impact on the performance.

Disabling HPET is probably the most popular Tweak. Everyone speaks about it, when it comes to tweaking your system. And there are actually alot of Benchmarks that show the Benefits of disabling HPET.
It boosts FPS across the board. 0.1% lows, 1% lows, Average FPS and Max FPS.
If you don't know what HPET does, In simple terms HPET is a hardware timer, that provides a more accurate and reliable timing mechanism than other system timers. It is useful for time-sensitive operations, such as multimedia and gaming.

So, today I tested HPET OFF vs ON. Disabling HPET gave me around 10%-20% FPS Boost. Input also felt better, because I got far less Stutters and the Game was smoother.
Enabling HPET seemed to have a negative impact on my CPU Utilization, while my GPU Utilization got lower, which is bad.
So, HPET On seems to put too much pressure on my CPU, which causes to produce a slight CPU Bottleneck, even tho I have a R5 2600x and GTX1070. My Setup is balanced and my CPU should be even capable of supporting a ~RTX3060...

How to Disable HPET?
1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator
2. Paste in this Command: bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock
(if you get an error, thats completely normal)
3. Exit out of Command Prompt
4. Go into Device Manager and Disable 'High Precision Event Timer'
5. Restart your PC


(Also I tested HPET On vs Off multiple Times and always got the same Results!)

Benchmarks:

Fortnite (Accurate Replay Benchmark, Average of 9x1min Benchmarks)

Fortnite HPET On vs Off.PNG (37.65 KiB) Viewed 62252 times

HPET ON (Worse FPS and GPU/CPU Utilization)

HPET On.PNG (63.04 KiB) Viewed 62252 times

HPET OFF (Better FPS and GPU/CPU Utilization)

HPET Off.PNG (71.85 KiB) Viewed 62252 times

(In Picture 2, CapFrameX reported wrong CPU Clock Speeds. It shows the CPU is running on 4ghz, but it was on 3,9ghz in all Tests. Just for clarification!)


The difference is massive!
I would like to know if anyone else tested this and got similar results. What are you guys thaughts?

[blackmagic]

in my case hpet settings give rly huge fps drop and everything stutters hard on my intel system...


but on my amd processor system and motherboard i could feel these boost and improvements between hpet on/off.
not much but still improvement...like better fps and smoothness as example.



sadly this all dont helps with my online problem and bad hiteg and bad everything.

[Kyouki]

I used to believe the same things but I am hard conflicted.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/e ... snake_oil/

Being that HPET off creates in consistent framerate or gives an improper measurement (or something from what I remember) and therefor metrics *seem* higher but aren't in reality.

I tried changing on and off with HPET/islc or timer 1ms > 0.5ms, but virtually feels the same for most games to me.

[FPSMaster]

I used to believe the same things but I am hard conflicted.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/e ... snake_oil/

Being that HPET off creates in consistent framerate or gives an improper measurement (or something from what I remember) and therefor metrics *seem* higher but aren't in reality.

I tried changing on and off with HPET/islc or timer 1ms > 0.5ms, but virtually feels the same for most games to me.

Thats Interesting, but I see changes in GPU Utilization and CPU Utilization and noticed heavy stutters in games. Turning it OFF fixed alot of Problems.
I really wonder if this applies to everyone, or if it's Setup Specifik.

[FPSMaster]

in my case hpet settings give rly huge fps drop and everything stutters hard on my intel system...


but on my amd processor system and motherboard i could feel these boost and improvements between hpet on/off.
not much but still improvement...like better fps and smoothness as example.



sadly this all dont helps with my online problem and bad hiteg and bad everything.

Interesting! For me, when I had my Intel PC Setup I actually saw no difference when turning it OFF. My only Explenation why it works better on Ryzen Setups is, because maybe AMD Boards have a worse implementation HPET. Or it's a problem with Windows.

[Loxar]

Even official Valorant support has a post about AMD and HPET, where it is suggested to disable HPET if performance is not as expected.

https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/ ... nce-Issues

[Tiberiusmoon]

I have disabled this, but I havent to round to testing so ill try that out.

The HPET tweak performance increase will depend on a number of factors, but ultimately the HPET will restrict the rate of frame generation and only until you disable it will you realise to performance increase.

[deama]

I wonder how it is with the newer ryzen systems.

[FPSMaster]

I wonder how it is with the newer ryzen systems.

I saw some People on YouTube benchmarking this on good Ryzen Systems and they also had a relatively big Improvement.
In one Video I gonna show, you can easily notice the Difference.
Here, see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF-jpouz7b8&t=280s
The left Video does stutter far more often then the right Video, because its the one with HPET On.
And of course the Benchmark Results speak for themself...

[Kyouki]

Yeah.. it'll give more numbers, but does that accurately represent performance or is it because of the mismatched timing that it gives more?