Alienware 17 r5 runs low fps with battery power.

My Alienware 17 had runs perfect with AC adapter. Everything are fine, but whenever i unplug the AC adapter. The fps dropped dramatically, it would only be 1/3 of the originally fps which means it's impossible for me to play any games without AC adapter. I had contact Dell, and they checked my hardware, there are no problem with my hardware. I have checked that the power option is always on :High performance. This is weird that my laptop has such low fps without ac adapter. I've tried many laptops with low configuration, and they even runs better without charger. Please help me to find a solution for it.

Alienware 17 specification:


Alienware 17 Base

32GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz

English Keyboard

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB GDDR5



5G WiFi Broadcom 4352 802.11n/ac and Bluetooth 4.0 driver



768GB RAID 0 (3x256GB SSD) + 256GB mSATA SSD Storage Drive



Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, English



Not Selected in this Configuration


Wireless : Killer NIC 1420 802.11n/ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0


US 125V Power Cord

Documentation, English

Soft Contracts Dell In-Home Hardware Agreement for Alienware

1 Year Limited Warranty

No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
$0.00
1
994-3730
Warranty Support, Initial Year
$0.00
1
954-4168
Dell Hardware Warranty Plus On-Site Service, Initial Year
$0.00
1
954-4191
In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis, Parts and Labor On-Site Response, Initial Year
$0.00
1
640-BBLC
Alienware Command Center 3.0
$0.00
1
658-BBNS
System Software for Alienware M17xR1
$0.00
1
340-ADEV
Setup Instructions English
$0.00
2
332-1530
Dell.com Order
$0.00
1
451-BBCB
8-cell Lithium Ion (86 wHr) Battery
$0.00
1
338-BCHX
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4930MX Processor (8MB Cache, up to 3.9 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
$977.10
1
354-BBBB
Alienware 17 Silver Anodized Aluminum (Non 3D)
$0.00
1
340-ADEL
Alienware 17 Anodized Aluminum
$0.00
1
730-7102
Fixed Hardware Configuration
$0.00
1
340-ACQQ
No Dedicated GPS
$0.00
1
389-BCCZ
Windows 7 Label
$0.00
1
391-BBEM
17.3 inch (439.42 mm) WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare Display
$146.56

450-AAJI
240W AC Adapter
$0.00

 

Dunno why dell never told you but the 780m draws too much current for the battery to even last 30 mins and would destroy it. The card automatically clocks down on battery. You may find that forcing the iGPU gives you acceptable performance on battery but it's not going to be full speed of the NV.

 

does that mean everything runs normal on my laptop? u mean everyone are the same who are using 780m?

 

Yes, as designed, so as to not overheat a battery.

I've never seen any NV GPU run at full speed on battery and read a lot of people trying. The 780m model even comes with a high power PSU as the one supplied with lower models will not run a 780m at full speed. I've seen one guy that upgraded his AW 17 to a 780m but then found he had to get the uprated PSU to use it at full speed

 

thx a lot man. Just one more question, does 880M would have same issue on alienware 17?

 

As Micky has said your laptop is running just fine, this is normal for the GPU to down clock when your on battery power. You have to look at the big picture, you are playing on a laptop with high performance parts. You need to look at it as a desktop replacement more then a laptop and as such the battery power is really just not there to run full tilt without an AC adapter. The battery just can't take that much draw on it and even if it could it wouldn't last more then a few minutes probably.

Not sure why the tech you talked to would not tell you any of this.

Your laptop is running fine my friend, just keep it plugged in.

 

Np . Yeah I would be certain of it. As MogRules explains

 

Yep when you unlock the vbios it will run on battery on full speed for 5min till overloading your battery. But yes if it's not unlocked it will downclock to not allow you to run full speed.

 

Any gaming laptop with a dedicated GPU will perform better with the A/C adapter connected and plugged in. That's just how it is...

No need to worry about your PC.

 

if you want decent fps then you don't run it on the battery only....i thought that was common sense.

 

Yup. The battery just can't output enough power at once to power the system when it's running full tilt (gaming), so the GPU downclocks. If it's an older game or whatever, you might try the iGPU and see if that gives you playable frame rates, albeit at lower detail settings.

 

Is "IGPU" a software which you can control the GPU usage?

 

What exactly is vbios? How do u exactly unlocked it? And additionally, I understand that it's impossible to run games like titanfall or battlefield 4 with battery only, what if I just want to play a really old game which can runs by a normal laptop on the market, and doesn't required any high configuration. Is there a way to set the laptop to use the GPU to the extend of reaching similar performance as a normal laptop does? Or am I only allowed to run full power only with 5 minutes battery life?

 

BIOS = Basic Input Output System. it's what controls the basic operation of the computer including initializing hardware and provide access between software and hardware. a VBIOS is the same thing but controls the GPU.

you could have at least googled it before asking.

through flashing but if you're not an expert or confident in doing the flashing (if you were you wouldn't be asking what a BIOS is) then i suggest not messing with it.

Use the Intel integrated GPU if it's an old game that doesn't require heaps of computing horsepower. I am sure there's a list of games that'll work on the intel GPUs.

 

You can run lots of games and get completely acceptable results using battery power, but when you start stressing the GPU is when your going to notice the performance. There have been plenty of times I load up minecraft or other such games and run then for over an hour before I realise I am running out of juice. Unfortunately with more demanding games the GPU isn't aloud to reach full potential because well...it just can't pump out that much power to it and so you get crappy performance because your computer needs more power then it can get and therefore down clocks the system to make it work.

Even with the unlocked vBios I am pretty sure mine still does this ... but I could be wrong I honestly can't remember. And as Gh0sts has pointed out if you not comfortable mucking around with something such as the vBios then please don't because if you do something wrong it can leave you with a non functioning GPU and obviously that is very bad.

As for the IGPU question, it is not a piece of software , it is your integrated Intel HD 4600 graphics that are built onto the CPU. If you use your switchable graphics you can run on the Intel HD GPU and see better battery life but obviously the integrated Intel graphics are not going to be anywhere near as good as your Nvidia card will be, although they have come a long way and do just fine for most older titles and non demanding games. It is a def advantage if your stuck away from a power receptacle but won't cut it for the newer more demanding titles. Chances are if you just got your system and it is stock from Alienware then it is probably on the IGPU already and it will auto switch when you start a game up, but in the off chance it isn't you can set the profile for the game in your Nvidia Control Panel Maybe that is part of your problem?

 

No your gpu will not ever downclock on battery power for power reasons with the unlocked bios ( I know because I monitor it with hwinfo and rivatuner ) what happens is it simply will play like crysis 3 for 2 to 5mkn before it has an emergency shutdown due to battery not being able to supply the juice. It will however downclock the CPU to 800mhz. To save power that way and give more power to unlocked bios. Now many will ask why and how I know this... Simply I love knowing what you "can" do, not to say you should do any of this because it will dry your battery.

 

You guys keep saying that, But when my R3 decided to glitch out, The new mobo is a tad finicky, Sometimes on battery it won't downclock the gpu, It'll leave it at max speed 740/1000mhz (6990m 100watt GPu from 2011) and i'd not lose performance nor have an exploding or hot battery, Though I'd only get 50 minutes of play time and that was that, Downclocked i'd get 110 minutes.

 

Strickly speaking I'm talking about nvidia GPU's with unlocked vbios's.

 

Strictly speaking batteries don't care what brand of GPU it is, They only care about power draw, 180 watts from the battery is still 180 watts (estimated 100watt gpu @ max, + cpu + display + other crap)

 

My gpu alone draws 145watts on a good day, on an excellent day its sometimes more.

 

Common sense is the most uncommon entity in recent generations. I can see the user is completely uninformed when it comes to his system but here's what I am going to tell you. If you draw over 200Watts from a battery pack that has a small capacity. You can potentially explode your cells and set your laptop and your table on fire. Here's an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTbUP0sGQT8

Granted thats the case of a battery that has undergone thermal runaway but drawing excessive power from your batter can cause something like this to happen

 

which is unfortunate.