Does adding more power to my PC make it faster?

[Battalion]

While I was finding a way to disable my power button, I cam across the Vista Power Plan, I found this:

Dell Recommended:

Energy Savings:***
Performance:***

Power Saver:

Energy Savings:******
Performance:**

High Performance:

Energy Savings:**
Performance:******

I want my PC to go fast, should I select High Performance? (I Don't really care about energy savings atm XD)

[Lord Orwell]

the only difference is a slowdown in drive access. It will shut drives off sooner and then you have to wait for them to power up again. Also it will enter standby mode sooner if you have it enabled.

[Battalion]

the only difference is a slowdown in drive access. It will shut drives off sooner and then you have to wait for them to power up again. Also it will enter standby mode sooner if you have it enabled.

Gracias Señor, I will leave it at Dell's Recommendation.

[Lord Orwell]

it not only saves power, it saves system wear and tear. Hard drives will power down, etc. Some systems can even dump ram to hard disk and shut the ram chips off.

[VBFiEND]

If your charger code is plugged in then use high performance mode, If its unplugged go into energy saver mode, But neither mode is going to make your computer slower or faster, all it does is stop using extra energy (Like making your screen brighter).

[JuggaloBrotha]

If your charger code is plugged in then use high performance mode, If its unplugged go into energy saver mode, But neither mode is going to make your computer slower or faster, all it does is stop using extra energy (Like making your screen brighter).

It does quite a bit more with the hardware than dimming the screen or not.

[TheBigB]

I've looked up power management in Windows 7 and it gave you possibility of limiting the maximum CPU load; but I guess this is primarily for notebooks.

[Lord Orwell]

I've looked up power management in Windows 7 and it gave you possibility of limiting the maximum CPU load; but I guess this is primarily for notebooks.

primarily, but not exclusively. lowering the cpu load has the side effect of lowing power consumption which has the side effect of lowering heat which has the side effect of keeping power-managed fans at a lower rpm which has the side effect of lowering ambient pc noise.

so this is useful if you have an htpc, which doesn't need much processor power but you want to leave it on all the time and keep it quiet, for example. You can also throttle it back to check to see if the system is overheating.