How to get good FPS and performance by enabling HPET in Windows 7

I have heard that enabling HPET in Windows 7 gives good FPS and performance, so I wanted to try out the same but I don’t know how to enable it in windows 7. Is there anyone who is aware of it and can help me out with the steps required for enabling it? Thanks in advance.

Yes enabling HPET in windows lets it give better performance and greater FPS. You can enable it from bios if you are having an option there. If you don’t have option for enabling HPET then your hardware might not be supporting it. Assuming that your hardware support HPET and you have enabled it you should run below command in command prompt (cmd) for forcing Windows to use HPET.

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

Just make sure that you are running command prompt as admin and rebooting your system after that.

You need to enable HPET in both BIOS as well as Windows. For more information on this I will like to share that windows will use combination of TSC+ACPI timers by default if you have just enabled HPET in bios and not in Windows. You will get best timer resolution, frame rate as well as lowest DPC latency after enabling HPET in bios as well as Windows. For testing the timer ratio and Query Performance Frequency you can use WinTimerTester 1.1. If you want windows to use to default timers then you can simply run below command:

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

Let me know if you face any issue further.

Yes HPET gives the best performance as compared to other default windows timers like TSC+LAPICs, LAPICs, TSC+HPET. I have enabled HPET in bios as well as windows and have run WinTimerTester 1.1 to see Query Performance Frequency and below is the surprising result.

• TSC+LAPICs = 2.74MHz
• LAPICs = 3.2 MHz
• TSC+HPET) = 3.4 MHz
• HPET high = 14.0MHz

I have noticed that I am getting +20 fps for the games that I used to play TSC or TSC+LAPICs.after enabling HPET.

Ok, what if I don’t have option for enabling HPET in bios? Will there be any raise in performance if I enable it in windows only? Sine you have mentioned “You need to enable HPET in both BIOS as well as Windows” I doubt I there will be any benefit, so what do you have to say about this?

Like I have mentioned enabling HPET gives better performance over windows default timers, enabling it from bios will basically add more to it and will give you best performance. If you are not having option for enabling HPET in bios and you are not sure if your hardware supports HPET or not then you can check out for HPET in device manager. If you are having "high precision event timer" in device manager than that means your hardware supports it. If HPET is completely unavailable and if you use “bcdedit /set useplatformclock true” command for forcing windows to use it then it will result to LAPICs, which is still better as compared to TSC or TSC+LAPICs. You can really see the difference while playing online games, assuming you are having updated drivers and bios.

I don’t know if enabling HPET is a better idea or not, it does helps in getting better fps but I don’t think it improves performance. My system runs on windows 7 home premium 64 bit and its hardware support HPET. I had tried enabling it some weeks ago from bios as well as windows and I did see the increment using WinTimerTester 1.1. Later I found my system taking more time to load, it had started performing a bit slow as well, it used to not freeze but its slow performance was noticeable. I wasn’t sure what was causing that, later while carrying out some trouble shooting when I disabled it then things started working fine. My system got back to normal, I don’t know if the performance gain is specific to hardware components or there is something wrong with HPET.

I have come across people complaining about this thing and I have noticed that most of the user has faced this issue with 64 bit system. I am not sure if this issue is specific to 64 bit system. Some people have also mentioned that even though WinTimerTester 1.1 shows huge difference after enabling HPET as compared to TSC+LAPICs, LAPICs, TSC+HPET but they don’t get better performance and fps actually. Whereas some say since enabling HPET their booting has boost up, they are getting better performance and better fps while gaming. I am really confused with these varying responses. In my case I have tried enabling HPET and I am getting better fps and performance but I don’t see any change in booting time and all. I will just add that if any user is having any doubt regarding benefit of HPET then they should better test it out their selves.