>Windows Energy-saving timer heuristics

Another example of Windows' technical debt being there, low-hanging fruit-wise, to be cashed in by performance-oriented developers. Its interesting that Youtube changing the timer resolution propagates to other threads .. does this harken to darker days in the MSDOS era? Youtube, another Turbo button?

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fragmede 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The best one, of course, is the one where Windows would install faster if you jiggled the mouse.

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jaffa2 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I this related to when you are scrolling and selecting within a document, and you wiggle the mouse, it scrolls faster ? I always thought it was just a nice UI optimisation, but I could believe it's actually some accidental side-effect at play.

(like make a 20 page word doc, and start selecting from the first page and drag through - it wil go faster if you jiggle. same in excel and nearly every windows app, even windows explorer)

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ninkendo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No, it has to do with every time you move the mouse over a window, a hover event is sent to the application, which runs its main event loop. Either the installer only updated its progress bar when an event happened (in which case it would only appear to be going faster, because the progress bar would move more smoothly) or there was some really terribly written code that literally only made progress when an (unrelated) event happened. My guess is the former.

	▲	moron4hire 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Being a bored kid in the 90s with nothing better to do, I had timed it. It was actually faster.

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giancarlostoro 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Makes me wonder how much of Windows is like Pokemon glitching, a community that never stops, even several generations ahead.

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antonvs 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A performance issue related to this is more likely a shortcoming in the software experiencing this issue.

The setting in question is the minimum timer resolution. Changing this will only have an impact on applications that depend heavily on that resolution, i.e. it's not some sort of turbo button for general execution speed. In fact according to the docs, a higher resolution can "reduce overall system performance, because the thread scheduler switches tasks more often."

An application whose performance depends on the timer resolution should be setting that resolution itself, using the Win32 API function mentioned in the thread, timeBeginPeriod, which includes the following in its documentation:

> For processes which call this function, Windows uses the lowest value (that is, highest resolution) requested by any process. For processes which have not called this function, Windows does not guarantee a higher resolution than the default system resolution.

> Starting with Windows 11, if a window-owning process becomes fully occluded, minimized, or otherwise invisible or inaudible to the end user, Windows does not guarantee a higher resolution than the default system resolution. See SetProcessInformation for more information on this behavior.

> Setting a higher resolution can improve the accuracy of time-out intervals in wait functions. However, it can also reduce overall system performance, because the thread scheduler switches tasks more often. High resolutions can also prevent the CPU power management system from entering power-saving modes.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/timeapi/...

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aa-jv 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Thats all well and good, but this part seems a bit .. uninformative, or at the very least, easily misunderstood by the harried developer:

>For processes which have not called this function, Windows does not guarantee a higher resolution than the default system resolution.

There should at least be mention that changing this resolution can effect other processes.

Is this a bug? Its hard to see it as a feature.

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ninkendo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> There should at least be mention that changing this resolution can affect other processes.

That sorta is what it’s saying. If you don’t set it yourself, you won’t get any better than the “default system resolution”. But if the default system resolution changes (say, by entering a sort of “performance mode” when playing games or watching videos), then it would imply it will affect all processes that are using the default, right?

	▲	Someone an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sorta, on Windows < 10. From the same Microsoft page: “Prior to Windows 10, version 2004, this function affects a global Windows setting. For all processes Windows uses the lowest value (that is, highest resolution) requested by any process. Starting with Windows 10, version 2004, this function no longer affects global timer resolution.”