It would be nice if it were that simple. Unfortunately, power settings under Windows are incredibly (and unnecessarily) complex, and I doubt that one in twenty users even knows the options are available. Worse, the Windows power settings tend to revert magically to "energy saving" mode under various unspecified conditions. This phenomenon almost cost me an expensive session at an EMC test lab once, when data acquisition on the device under test repeatedly timed out due to CPU starvation.
It's entirely reasonable for performance-critical applications (not just games!) to be able to request maximum available performance from the hardware without resorting to stupid tricks like the measures described in this story, launching threads that do nothing but run endless loops, and so forth.
I do agree with those who point out that this should be a user-controlled option. On the application side, this could be as simple as a checkbox labeled "Enable maximum performance while running" or something similar. Ideally, the OS would then switch back to the system-level performance setting when the application terminates, rather than leaving it up to the application to do the right thing and restore it explicitly.
It's entirely reasonable for performance-critical applications (not just games!) to be able to request maximum available performance from the hardware without resorting to stupid tricks like the measures described in this story, launching threads that do nothing but run endless loops, and so forth.
I do agree with those who point out that this should be a user-controlled option. On the application side, this could be as simple as a checkbox labeled "Enable maximum performance while running" or something similar. Ideally, the OS would then switch back to the system-level performance setting when the application terminates, rather than leaving it up to the application to do the right thing and restore it explicitly.