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Gaming on battery power Issues

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briandr   09-05-2008 at 05:09:31 AM

Hi all, i recently bought an ASUS M50VM laptop from newegg. it has a 9600m gs. so far i have been very impressed with the gaming capability of this laptop. its nothing outstanding but its a laptop so i wasnt expecting to much.

today i tried to play a game on battery power for the first time and the graphics card never kicked out of idle. it just sat at 170/100(gpu/mem), instead of 430/400. this is my first laptop with a dedicated graphics card so im kind of lost.

i have the latest drivers available from laptopvideo2go.com, i have looked in the nvidia controll panel and have not seen any sort of option or anything. power plan is set to high performance.


brian

------------------------------ intel C2Q q6700
asus p5q pro
GSkill 4gb ddr2-1066
evga 8800gt SC
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Bronze Laptops badge frozenlead   09-05-2008 at 05:57:58 AM
- 0 +

Gaming notebooks aren't designed to run on batteries playing games.

Compare the wattage of your power supply to that of your battery. You'll find your battery is a heck of a lot weaker.

The computer can't supply the power to clock the GPU at full while on batteries. Don't even try.

Reply to frozenlead
cjl   09-05-2008 at 06:20:59 AM
- 0 +

The graphics card isn't supposed to kick out of idle on battery, regardless of the demand. My XPS M1710 scores 5300 in 3dmark06 on wall power, and 1102 on battery for example. Not only that, but when I try to play a game on battery, I have perhaps 45mins of battery, max. They really aren't meant for any gaming on battery power.

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Bronze Laptops badge lostandwandering   09-05-2008 at 05:06:42 PM
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Normally, if you want to game while on the battery, you need to go into the NV control panel and turn PowerMizer off. Not really sure why that option isn't showing in your controls though. Could always try a different driver version, try looking for one that was released specifically for Asus laptops so you don't have to mess with the .INF files.

------------------------------ LAPTOP: Sager NP5760|T7200|2gb DDR2-667| 100gb 7200rpm HDD| 512mb 7950GTX|17'' WUXGA

Desktop: Core2 E7200 | Corsair 2gb DDR2-800 | Gigabyte EP35-DS3L | 250gb Seagate Barracuda | MSI GTX260 (192 SP) | Corsair VX550 | Antec 300 case
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cjl   09-08-2008 at 03:24:57 AM
- 0 +

I wouldn't recommend it - on mine it would overheat the battery.


Message edited by cjl on 09-08-2008 at 03:25:08 AM
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briandr   09-08-2008 at 07:59:56 PM
- 0 +

thanks - lostandwandering

i was able to find powermizer in the registry and disable it, seems to be working great. went from 5-20 fps in COD4 to 20-50. so far i havnt noticed any overheating but i will try and keep an eye on the battery.

Message quoted 1 times
------------------------------ intel C2Q q6700
asus p5q pro
GSkill 4gb ddr2-1066
evga 8800gt SC
Reply to briandr
Bronze Laptops badge lostandwandering   09-08-2008 at 10:49:22 PM
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briandr wrote :

thanks - lostandwandering

 

i was able to find powermizer in the registry and disable it, seems to be working great. went from 5-20 fps in COD4 to 20-50. so far i havnt noticed any overheating but i will try and keep an eye on the battery.

 

Glad you were able to find it. You may also see some gains if you disable SpeedStep, but that might also cause heating issues since I'm not sure how Asus has the fans set up to work.

 

edit: you will see a very noticeable drop in battery life from the combination of these.


Message edited by lostandwandering on 09-08-2008 at 10:50:03 PM
------------------------------ LAPTOP: Sager NP5760|T7200|2gb DDR2-667| 100gb 7200rpm HDD| 512mb 7950GTX|17'' WUXGA

Desktop: Core2 E7200 | Corsair 2gb DDR2-800 | Gigabyte EP35-DS3L | 250gb Seagate Barracuda | MSI GTX260 (192 SP) | Corsair VX550 | Antec 300 case
Reply to lostandwandering
briandr   09-08-2008 at 11:33:08 PM
- 0 +

im not planning on disabling speedstep, the computer seems to do a pretty good job of regulating the speed. if i do end up needing a little more speed i might, so far temps have not been a problem, cpu is usualy 33/48 and gpu is usualy 46/68 (idle/load)

 

as for the powermizer, it still downclocks the graphics card when not running a 3d app so normal battery life is still excellent, when gaming i get about 1/3 normal battery life(from 3hrs down to about 1)

  


Message edited by briandr on 09-08-2008 at 11:42:13 PM
------------------------------ intel C2Q q6700
asus p5q pro
GSkill 4gb ddr2-1066
evga 8800gt SC
Reply to briandr
Bronze Laptops badge frozenlead   09-08-2008 at 11:37:58 PM
- 0 +

Ahhh, gaming notebooks.

The only place where you can see "excellent" and "1 hour" in the same sentence.

Reply to frozenlead
briandr   09-08-2008 at 11:53:47 PM
- 0 +

i was referring to the 3hr being excellent...... but i still dont consider 1 hour of battery life bad when both the cpu and cpu are running at nearly 100%.

------------------------------ intel C2Q q6700
asus p5q pro
GSkill 4gb ddr2-1066
evga 8800gt SC
Reply to briandr
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