Enabling HPET with Windows 10

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community. Let me help you.

• Are you referring to High precision Event Timer?

• What is the make and model of your computer?

I suggest you to check with your computer manufacturer customer support for queries related to adjusting the BIOS settings.

If you have any queries related to Windows Operating Systems, please feel free to contact us again. We will be happy to assist you further.

Hi Aswin,

Apologies I should have provided more detail.

I am referring to the High Precision Event Timer. There is conflicting information out there and I wanted to clarify something with respect to Windows 10 and how it handles this.

I am running Microsoft Windows 10 Professional Build 10586 on an SanDisk SSD with a ~5 year old GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P motherboard;  GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 460 GPU; 8GB Dual-channel DDR3.

In this post:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1567745/windows-10-disable-hpet-before-install-and-enjoy-low-latencies MonarchX states:

When HPET (High Precision Event Timer) was enabled in BIOS, Windows 8.1 would automatically use it and install system device driver for it. Now I advice to disable HPET because even if you have it enabled in BIOS, Windows 10 won't use it by default, but it will install the system device driver for it. That is GOOD news because Windows 10 finally switched to some other (new?) method of handling latencies and it works much better than HPET!

So the questions are as follows:

Does Windows 10 have its own implementation of the High Precision Event Timer superseding the built in HPET enabled in the BIOS of certain motherboards?

If that is the case then I will disable HPET.

If that is not true and Windows 10 can still use HPET, then I want to know if it has to be enabled both in the Bios and by modifying the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store. Because in this post and others I have seen:

http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/218777-massive-fps-improvement-through-enabling-hpet-in-bios-and-win10/

They state:

To enable it in Windows 10, with administrative priviledges you must modify BCD

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

Thank you for taking the time to answer this question.

Hi Aswin,

I think we can consider this related to Windows Operating Systems especially since HPET was a collaboration between Microsoft and Intel. Will Microsoft be answering my question?

I have done some research and found a great utility written by Tristan Hyams. This program, Harmonic, monitors the HPET. See

http://www.bytemedev.com/programs/harmonic-help/

With this program I could see that you need to enable HPET in the BIOS as well as modifying  the BCD and setting Useplatformclock to True.

So my questions still remain:

Does Windows 10 use HPET (High Precision Event Timer) or does it have its own event timer superseding HPET.

If it can be used by Windows 10, is it recommended? Why?

If it is used by Windows 10 can someone confirm that it has to be enabled both in the BIOS and with the BCD setting Useplatformclock?

I too would further like to know if Windows 10 uses a newer version of the event timer - TSC. Can anyone in the Windows community state definitively whether this is true or not? Even when I disable on BIOS, disable using the CDM line, the driver still shows up within Device Manager. However I have now set this to disabled. 

Any clarification would be helpful!

Greetings from Germany.

You just have to experiment with this setting. i heard of this just this week, haven t known before of these timer settings and that changing it might give you better performance.

well, i tried out with my amd fx6300 and gtx 1060, disabled the hpet in the bios and i am also using a tool called "timer tool" set windows timer to 0.5. 

The result is, that overall system performance is more "fluid", some games like gta 4, gta 5 and civilization v run better, not more frames per second, but the microstutter has gone.

i read on different threads, from intel i5 or similar amd processor on, disabling hpet gives better performance on win 10, older cpus, especially a lot of dual core cpus, run better with it turned on.

so i tried it on my old asus x73 notebook with a intel 2410m, i could not recognize any change in performance, not better not slower.

I dont own more "modern" Computers to try, and the fx6300 is old anyway. If this setting helps with brand new hardware everybody has to find out.

In benchmarks, like cinebench, i haven t more points, its really only a more fluid feeling.

greetings