Power Consumption And Battery Life
Apart from their graphics modules, the Xotic PC NP9150 and Eurocom Racer 2.0 are nearly identical.
Desktop enthusiasts might wonder how AMD's Radeon HD 7970M and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 675M happen to have similar power requirements, and the easy answer is that both are designed to fit into the same chassis. Any power consumed is dissipated as heat, and both modules are designed to operate under similar cooling capabilities.
Battery Eater Pro shows that the NP9150 takes a little less time to discharge, and a little more time to charge. Since the same battery model is used by both machines, it's possible that the NP9150’s battery may have been used before, though it's hard to say for sure.
We also tried a little gaming on battery power, and discovered that the Xotic PC machine's performance dropped by about two-thirds when it was unplugged. That loss is completely correctable through configurable power settings, and the specific option we needed to change is also shown in AMD's Catalyst Control Center.
Changing the PowerPlay battery-use setting to “Maximize Performance” brought back all of the expected 3D performance, but also significantly shortened the length of our gaming experience. The NP9150 with a Radeon HD 7970M is roughly tied with the Racer 2.0's GeForce GTX 675M in game time at approximately 25 minutes. Meanwhile, the Kepler-based GeForce GTX 660M extended our session to around 43 minutes, though its performance is also quite a bit slower.