> Any periodic activity with a rate faster than one minute incurs the scrutiny of the Windows performance team, because periodic activity prevents the CPU from

> Any periodic activity with a rate faster than one minute incurs the scrutiny of the Windows performance team, because periodic activity prevents the CPU from entering a low-power state. The power savings available in very low latency sleep states has improved a great deal in CPUs (even desktop and server ones since power saving ~= performance with DVFS and turbo modes). Such that 60s should be well beyond the knee of the curve. A few seconds possibly gets you the vast majority of saving (I'm less sure about PCI/GPU implications). That said if it's an aspirational goal that's great. But I'm very surprised that windows would not have a lot of periodic activity at intervals below 60s. Even when you're talking about an unrealistic system that has no network connection or activity.