3d r3 battery life vs non 3d ?

So I was readying about the batterylife with the3d version of this notebook its actually alot worst then the batterylife of a non 3d version , apparently because optimus can not work with a 3d enabled laptop reguardless if it is using 3d or not. Can anyone confirm this? And if so, whats the battery life differences? Thanks!

 

optimus doesn't work with 3d. the battery life definitely suffers though idk how much. optimus is more pain than its worth though, if you want battery life get an AMD GPU, its a lot easier to use and doesn't have as many issues.

 

If you're buying an Alienware in the first case, assure yourself that battery life is not one of the qualities that you will be looking for.
I don't think any Alienware M17x out there is able to run more than 3-4 hours on battery with WIFI turned on and with the abillity to actually use it. With 3D activated, i would guess about 1,5 hrs.


As the person mentioned over, Optimus isn't that good at all. And the 3D-functionality will probably drop your lifetime with another 10-20%.


Don't count on running that machine on battery either way, just so that is said..
- Scott.

 

I run mine on battery and can get four hours consistently taking notes in class. The class is 4 hours and 10 minutes. Granted I have the AMD which can be switched.

From my experience optimus is a pain. This is coming from a m14x though.

 

i get around 4 hours too, though im not using the wifi or anything

 

I achieve around 3 to 3.5 hours setting the screen to dim after 1 minute and having the lowest brightness setting on a 3D screen, using wifi when needed just to upload files or check queries for a class.

Can someone verify this: The low brightness setting, I have read, is not a trade off since the 3D screen is brighter than most non-3D screens. Based on my other laptops and monitors I find this to be more or less a fact.

Also it should be noted I have only ran this trial twice just to see how much battery life is achieved without being plugged in, if the need ever arose. Should be no reason to justify power with battery life. Since then I have been plugged in whenever possible.

 

agreed lol you by this thing for power, not for battery life. I just think of the battery life as a big plus

 

oh i know but it has pretty decent battery life as compared to the m14x. Thats the first notebook i purchased for a mix of power and battery life but sadly i was a bit disappointed by the performance (gpu wise). I also like the fact that you can upgrade the gpu in the m17x making it more future proof. Now I hear this thing does have pretty decent battery life when all things off and dim and used for things like microsoft word, but I didnt know that the 3d verson of it didnt have optimus and runs on the GPU at all times. Which sucks because when ive got everything dim in class trying to take notes my battery life will still sort of suck because im on the GTX and not the IGP. I was wondering if anyone had any definite figures for bat life loss with the 3d verion vs non doing the same thing such as taking notes or writing a report on microsoft word without anything else on. thanks for the replies guys.

 

just go with the a system with the 6990 in it. You get good power and you can manually switch between the discrete card and the igpu. Then you won't have to worry about optimus all

 

Too late, i already have my system its the 3d version, thats why i wanted to know the battery life im suffering for this 3d that i really havent used much yet

 

you know how long it will last right now? i can run a test and see how long mine last for sure if you want

 

sure if you can, and ill run one with the "non optimus" verison to see exactly how much battery life you lose just to have 3d. This really sucks though i was planning to take this to class and use it to take notes, reading it has around 5 hours of bat life. With this loss of optimus i bet its going to be alot less for me.

 

With screen brightness on lowest and wifi on. I can manage just over 2 hours on browsing and word processing.