The mode you use to power down your PC affects performance on the next session. For gaming, a clean state matters more than fast resume.
Sleep
RAM stays powered. Everything is preserved in memory. Resume is near-instant (1-3 seconds).
Issue for gaming: background processes that were running before sleep resume exactly where they left off. If something was accumulating junk state (memory leaks, fragmented thread pools), it continues in that state.
Hibernate
RAM contents written to hiberfil.sys on disk. Power off. On wake, contents restored from disk.
Issue: slower resume (10-30 seconds). Same state preservation problem as sleep — you're restoring exactly the state from before hibernation, including any issues.
Shutdown
Full power off. On next boot, fresh kernel state, fresh service initialization, clean scheduler state.
Best for gaming: a cold boot before a gaming session gives you the cleanest possible system state.
Fast Startup problem
Fast Startup (enabled by default) makes shutdown behave like hibernate — the kernel state is preserved. So "shutting down" doesn't actually give you a clean boot. Disable it:
Control Panel → Power Options → Choose what the power buttons do → uncheck "Turn on fast startup"
After disabling, a genuine shutdown means next boot is a cold boot: fresh kernel, fresh drivers, no carry-over state.
IzanagiOP disables Fast Startup and hibernate (freeing hiberfil.sys disk space) in the Safe Optimizations pack. https://terweb.lt/
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