{"id":235,"date":"2012-02-20T12:50:40","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T17:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/?p=235"},"modified":"2012-02-20T12:52:24","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T17:52:24","slug":"computer-power-plan-impact-on-powerpivot-dax-query-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/235_computer-power-plan-impact-on-powerpivot-dax-query-performance","title":{"rendered":"Computer Power Plan impact on PowerPivot DAX query performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was working recently with PowerPivot 1.0 workbook and was using it on my desktop and on my laptop. I noticed that there was\u00a0\u00a0big performance difference when I was refreshing my Pivot Tables between these 2 machines so I did more tests to figure out why this is happening.<\/p>\n<p>Here are specs on my machines:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Laptop (about 4 years old):<br \/>\nOS &#8211; Windows 7 Ultimate, 32bit<br \/>\nProcessor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.5Ghz<br \/>\nRAM: 3GB RAM<br \/>\nHDD: 7200RPM HDD<\/p>\n<p>Desktop (about 2 years old):<br \/>\nOS: Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise SP1, 64bit<br \/>\nProcessor: AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-Core 2.4GHz<br \/>\nRAM: 8GB<br \/>\nHDD: 5400RPM HDD<\/p>\n<p>Naturally as laptop is much less powerful, I expected it to be at least a bit slower. But that was not a feeling I was getting. I noticed that my laptop was responding always faster, so I did this simple test on both machines:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open this workbook\u00a0(about 3MB in size with 6 pivot tables and a few slicers)<\/li>\n<li>Enable trace<\/li>\n<li>Hit refresh on one of the pivot tables<\/li>\n<li>Close worksheet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I reviewed traces and I can see that one of the slower queries run twice as fast on the laptop comparing to my desktop.<\/p>\n<p>At first I could not understand what is happening, but then I remember another issue I had with some of my development servers running much slower than expected. At that time I had issue that my SQL Server table compression operations\u00a0running much slower on more powerful servers and with the help of <a href=\"http:\/\/sqlserverperformance.wordpress.com\/2010\/12\/28\/the-importance-of-windows-power-plans-for-server-performance\/\" target=\"_blank\">Glenn Berry I established that this was due Power Plan settings on that server<\/a>. That time I had to change servers BIOS setting for CPU usage and Control Panel settings for Power Settings and that server was compressing tables twice as fast.<\/p>\n<p>So I did similar tests here. I downloaded <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpuid.com\/softwares\/cpu-z.html\" target=\"_blank\">CPU-Z utility<\/a> and run tests on my laptop and on my workstation and saw that both were reporting that while idle my CPU was running on\u00a0partial power &#8211; \u00a01.2GHz on my desktop and 780MHz on my laptop.<\/p>\n<p>So I\u00a0changed Power Plan for my laptop and desktop:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Control Panel<\/li>\n<li>Power Options<\/li>\n<li>Changed Power Plan from &#8220;Balanced&#8221; to &#8220;High Performance&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With new settings CPU-Z reported that my CPUs were running at their top reported speed.<\/p>\n<p>I re-run the same test on my laptop and did not see any performance improvements. So I set my Power Plan on the laptop back to &#8220;Balanced&#8221;, mostly because it is important for me to have longer battery life on the laptop.<\/p>\n<p>On my desktop I saw 100% performance improvement for my test workbook &#8211; my queries were running twice as fast and query duration now was very close to the same query duration on my laptop. I checked power consumption (without monitor) on my\u00a0desktop and it went from about 70 watts when in &#8220;Balanced&#8221; power plan to about 75 watts when in &#8220;High Performance&#8221; power plan. Clearly I was very happy with new settings and from now my desktop machine will run on &#8220;High Performance&#8221; power plan.<\/p>\n<p>Conclusion<\/p>\n<p>If your machine is used to run many CPU intensive tasks like PowerPivot, try to change Power Plan settings for your PC\/server to &#8220;High Performance&#8221; and\u00a0test impact &#8211; you might be pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was working recently with PowerPivot 1.0 workbook and was using it on my desktop and on my laptop. I noticed that there was  big performance difference when I was refreshing my PivotTables between these 2 machines so I did more tests to figure out why this is happening. I established that performance difference was related to Power Plan settings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssas-info.com\/VidasMatelisBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}