M17xR3 & NVIDIA Optimus Battery Life (460M+60Hz) vs. 3D Battery Life (460M+120Hz)

QUESTION:
why is there currently no distinguishable difference in battery life for M17x R3's equipped with optimus technology (GTX 460M + 60Hz panels) as compared to those without optimus technology (GTX 460M + 120Hz panels)?

ANSWER:
??? ???

QUESTION:
is the M17x R3 optioned with GTX 460M and 60Hz panel equipped with nvidia optimus technology?

ANSWER:
yes. see responses below...

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Do you have links discussing this? Is this (comparison data) somewhere in the OL thread?

 

Any evidence viking ? This would be interesting... I can see no reason why it does not work...

Only few ppl would buy 460m + 60hz btw...

 

My battery life is, at max, +30mins of non-optimus (according to what others have posted in terms of their battery life).

 

I just pulled the trigger today on a 460m w 60hz.. You might be surprised how many of us are out there. Reasons I did it:

1. I hate ati's drivers and profiles. My r2 had ati's due to the dpc latency issues the r1 had so Dell forced them on me during the upgrade.

2. Nvidia has better Linux support.

3. Even as a game developer I find 3d movies and games gimmicky and distracting. I dislike losing contrast and color spectrum with the glasses to have something pop out slightly. So I didn't see the need for the upgrade.

 

Normal usage (no games) I can go about 3 hours w/o having to plug in. If I'm gaming, that goes down to around 1-1.5 hours. Running default drivers. Brightness is at 40% on both power & battery.

 

I think someone posted that the 460M isn't really powered off when in IGP mode unlike the ATI GPU which disappear from the device drivers menu indicating it may be powered off completely.

With the 6970M I easily get 4 hours and if I disable bluetooth, AlienFX, and reduce brightness to minimal, I can almost get 5 hours.

 

I can get windows to tell me I have 5.5 hours of battery life with:
bluetooth off
alienfx off
wireless off
brightness as low as it goes
running no programs

...but it really only lasts ~4.25 hours. That's sort of an extreme example though (I mean, who uses a notebook like that? It's technically not even in use, just turned on).

 

I was able to squeeze 3:53 out of mine with wifi on, AlienFX off, screen at lowest brightness. This was using it to just surf the web. I would think there would need to be at minimum 1+ hr more to make Optimus worth it.

 

Oh hello. Using it for normal work at balanced, wifi on, lights on and %50 brightness, I surprisingly get 3:45 hrs -4:00 hrs.

I haven't used the computer much on power saver but im guessing it will give me 4+ hours .



However, I've been hearing that other systems are getting >3:30 hours.....

 

That's the exact amount of battery life of non-optimus, hence the point of this thread's existence.
edit: actually, if you are using 'balanced' power setting as you said, that's technically lower than non-optimus

 

Oh wow

Should have got non optimus.... lol

 

since optimus seems useless on this sytem then, it's 3 to 3.5 hours average 'untethered' for an M17x R3 w/NVIDIA (w/o use of iGPU) and 4 to 4.5 hours average 'untethered' w/AMD (w/use of iGPU). so aside from battery, advantage to NVIDIA for 3D, advantage to AMD for @30% performance increase. hmmm, choices...