Battery Life is not what you would expect

Just received my R2 today and not once even sitting idle have not I seen windows report more 4 1/2 hours on battery. I am thinking the Nvidia card is some how always stuck on.

 

I'm getting mines tomorrow, but I've heard similar stories about the 335 being partially on whether it to be to encode something or render. I really wished it had similar battery life to the r1, theres really no reason for it not to, I really think if there was a hardware fn-f6 switch like the r1 the r2 would have a lot better battery life.

 

Yea I am trying to get to the bottom of this. But This thing might be going back to Dell.

 

Nuts , I was also purchasing this mainly for BATTERY life and portability, I do not like to return things and hope I don't. The rep I spoke to said it would have similar battery life to the r1. This doesn't seem like much of the case. The i5 vs core2duo should not affect battery life by that many minutes/hours. It has to be optimus problems D:.

 

I wouldn't trust Windows' estimation, especially if you just got it. That said, did you get the I7? 4-4.5 hours seems to be the average for non-gaming use and with the screen's brightness down a bit from what I've seen posted, and that's without the 335m staying on.

 

Have you tried disabling turbo mode and seeing how long it can last, maybe even decease it from CC

 

Guys, the nvidia is always on with the default dell drivers. Download the new beta drivers and your power at idle will drop from 20w to 14w. I was just about to post this, I have been testing with a kilowatt meter

 

Ninja I wish I could rep you again

EDIT: Pictures ><

 

Hey can someone with the new Nvidia driver test the Battery life ? I mean from 20w to 14w (good to hear that ninja) is a huge difference !
I once tested my battery with this tool BatteryMon: BatteryMon - Demo - Download.CHIP.eu
It gives you information about the capacity and discharging mW/time of a notebook. It would be cool if someone can do that test to see how long the battery lasts really (windows time is a bad as hell indicator).

 

I will do it for you. I have been getting just over 6 hours with my i7 listening to music

I will test the life with and without the fix to see the difference.

 

OK well it seems even the old driver turns off the nvidia card whilst on battery! Its just when it is plugged in that the old drivers leaves the nvidia card on.
The 5w whilst plugged in are good to save though as that is extra heat it has to push out when you are not doing anything.

Using battery bar I get the following measurements:
Idle: 10200mah -estimates 6:55h
music: 12300 - 5:45h
music and surfing: 13288 - 5:15h (just browsing the this forum)

 

Great to hear that thanks. 6 hours is awesome compared to the 4 and a half stated above.

Did you turn off the screen while listening to music ? Because I sometimes only listen to music on my Samsung R560 laptop and therefor I turn off the LCD. Is it possible to turn off the LCD on the M11xR2 ?

Can't wait to get my R2 and start testing

 

I had the screen on 1 bar brightness. I often listen to music without screen by closing the lid (making sure you have set it to "do nothing" when closing the lid in the power options)

I seem to get about an hour less with light use than my R1.

 

Can we source a battery with higher amp/watt to replace the stock m11x and get more juice?

 

I'm gonna have to agree. While I haven't done any extensive battery testing I seem to get 2.5-3 hours of battery life, which is the type of battery life I expected for gaming from this laptop. But whenever I run google chrome and run youtube or anything flash related the 335M turns on, which is probably why my battery life is so low for simple internet browsing.

Anyone know how much the LCD brightness and the AlienFX lights affect battery life?

 

Flash content viewed in Chrome will force the 335 to activate. Flash viewed in Firefox on the other hand doesn't do this. I suspect IE8 won't either, but I haven't bothered to test that.

 

Oh yeah I know. Someone explained that to me in another thread. It's just that Chrome is my browser of choice and I don't really want to switch back to firefox. Sorta sucks that I can't do anything about it.

 

I found out flash does turn on when using IE and firefox, atleast in my experience.

Im using Dell's beta driver btw.

 

Ninja can you share your settings. Do you run the Lights on? Are you O/Ced? Do you have turbo boost on? I have also noticed on battery sitting there doing nothing in balanced mode, if I leave CPU-Z open, the multiplier jumps from 5 to 9 and even sometimes 10. This can't be normal. CAn anyone else confirm this for me?

 

ninja your getting nearly 7 hours while idle! there are several posted drivers, which driver number did you install?

 

Yes! I am also interested on which is the driver of choice.

 

OK my settings:

turbo on, no overclock (it makes no difference anyway on the i7's performance)
keyboard light on, all other lights off (as I dont like them)
screen on 1 bar
WIFI on Bluetooth off
Powersaver on.

I am using original Dell driver (as I get problems with the new drivers) I have edited the registry to turn off the nvidia when not in use like the beta drivers.

I have noticed the same in cpuz, I think it is querying the nvidia which is causing the spikes, if you use the nvidia optimus tool posted on here, watch how it behaves with cpuz open, it flicks between off and idle overy half second

 

original Dell drivers, the beta causes me problem with punkbuster/bfbc2

 

Yea I noticed this as well. I think I am gonna grab a SSD, re-install windows fresh and see where that puts me. If I can get 4-5 solid hours of battery life, I will be a happy camper. Ninja what does windows report when at 100% and you are sitting idle? Does it show 7 hours?

 

I just got my m11x r2, played with it a bit, it says 3 hours @ 80%... im pissed, also, the edge at the top where bezel meets the display looks to be somewhat misplaced where I can see the molding, I'll post some pics when I find out how

 

Check the optimization thread, that will help a bit, no lights drops the usage a little, I also drop my max CPU usage to 25% (you don't have to go that low) and use 20% brightness. This give me an average w/ battery bar of 4 hours 30 minutes, this is testing with non-stop downloading using Steam as well as constant surfing and a little gaming, I am on day 2 for this average.

 

Hello all. I just ordered an r2 with the i7. One of the most important things to me is battery life on this machine. I've been looking through a lot of the threads and it doesn't look like the i7 really makes much of a difference in gaming vs the core 2 duo in the r1. Is it safe to assume the i7 will never really match (or get close to) the r1 in terms of battery life through driver / bios updates etc??

I'm really wondering if I should cancel my order and go with the r1. I know there has been posts about battery optimization etc...but I don't really want to have to turn my screen brightness all the way down and tweak it to get a solid 5 hours of battery life. Any advice? It just doesn't seem like there is any real benefits from the R2. R2 owners please correct me if I'm wrong! Thanks.

 

I wish I had gotten an r1, I will say that pretty flatly, I have to give it a heavy dose down to get 5+ out of it.

 

shoot! It's looking more and more like I should cancel my order and get an r1. The problem is I can't really find any good benchmark comparisons... if the r2 was worth the battery penalty I might still go for it. I play mostly valve games and mass effect 1 & 2 lately, left 4 dead 2 is probably what I play most. Does anyone know how much of a difference I can expect for these games in general. I saw one post said 15 fps, but it was based off of 2 you tube video comparisons I think. If anyone has any advice in this area I would really appreciate it.

Basically it comes down to this. If the r2 with the i7 will give me on avg. 15+ fps in l4d 2 it might be worth it to me. If its more like 5+ (or less) then I will def go with the r1 with core 2 duo. I really have searched through the forum but can't find any solid benchmarks for left 4 dead 2 or mass effect 2. Any advice is much appreciated!

 

I havent put up benchmarks yet but have been testing them side by side.

It does give me a big boost in the following games:
BFBC2
TF2
LFD2
Althought the frames remain similar you dont get big dips with the R2. As an example, on my R1 LFD2 plays quite well until a horde of zombies hits you and my fps drop to about 12-18. A good point to note this is coming out of the elavator in the hotel on teh first mission.

The R2 with higher settings dropped to about 25fps in the same place. That to me makes it worth it, as 25fps is playable to me where as under 20 is not.

I find another example is TF2, 2forts on a heavy action server my R1 would dip into the teens again but the R2 stays at a steady 30+ fps

The trade off is a lot more heat and less battery life.

 

Hey Ninja thanks for the info. Just curious, what settings are you running for L4D 2? I'm assuming you use highest settings and native res but I'm most interested in how much anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering make because I don't really care if they are on. Thanks! L4D 2 is one of my most played games....but I'm still leaning towards the core 2 and turning down the settings.

Would any R1 owners say they can get a solid 5 hours + of actual usage. For example with the laptop on balanced power, screen brightness 75%, surfing the web, watching some flash video, listening to music etc... Basically I'm asking can I get 5 hours on the R1 without really making an effort to do so?

 

i installed the new beta drivers and still only get about 5 hours on idle, i'd like to move it up to what ninja has

 

I just went through the whole 100% on IDLE, I browsed a little bit lightly but mainly just left it on unattended while timing it. I get exactly 4 hours of battery life with everything adjusted and optimized for the best power management. This is unacceptable. >=[

 

ohh duh the led lights

 

4 hours completely idle, i wonder why there is such variance among the r2s ninja is getting nearly 7 hours on idle

what is your setup?

 

i5, 250gb, 4gb. I went through entire optimization thread and actually boosted my battery life from 3:30 to 4..... I turned off aero, ports, etc and im getting 4 hours max now.

 

Where are you all getting your runtime numbers? I get an average for my daily web browsing, steam downloads and some light music listening (wifi on but no wifi connection). I checked optimization thread for AlienFX/other service shutdowns, run a modified Power Saver plan w/ 50% max cpu, hibernate at 5%, 20% brightness (although it doesn't stay there). Lights are usually on from the AlienFX fix, they turn on after hibernation. I run no Aero on battery life.

Specs are same as above (fast track)

 

4 hours seems really low completely optimized, silly question but have you overclocked anything ? i have the i7, both cpus have the same tdp so i don't know if one could use more power than the other. have you installed new video drivers?

 

I have note overclocked anything at all yet, and I have also not installed the new drivers as everything has been working fine in terms of optimus, at least I think so. I have driver "8.16.11.8969" what does this mean, this is the default one, but why are the new ones different format?

 

Also, my keyboard is not straight, it sticks up quite obviously near the WASDF buttons, how long does dell take to replace/fix laptops because I am leaving on vacation on the 7th D: so I'm in a pinch atm.

 

Something's not right if you're getting 4 hours idle. Search my posts for what sorts of times I'm getting with my R2.

Kinda tired of typing it again and again.

 

the only time i ever had a dell laptop repaired they sent a guy out to replace the screen, it was several years ago but i recall it being timed very precisely and quickly i can not recall what type of warranty i had

 

My keyboard does the same thing. Are you sure it's an error and not just the design (albeit a bad one or oversight)? (I'm just wondering if I need to send mine in, too.)

My computer is pretty much yours--I5, 4gb ram, 320gb hd, not overclocked, but I only turned off the firewire port. I've been browsing constantly with all the case lights off except the keyboard, Aero on, the CPU allowed to go to any speed, wireless off (I'm using wired Internet), paging file off. After two hours I'm now down to 65%.

Are you running anything in the background that might be using resources like antivirus software?



btw 1201NFTW, having the same TDI doesn't mean the I5 and I7 use the same power. TDI isn't about power usage; it deals with the cooling system. Specifically it specifies the maximum amount of power the cooling system must be able to handle.

 

Just thought I'd let you all know I had a core i7 on order and canceled it for the core 2 version. I find it strange that r2 users are doing all this crazy optimization (super low brightness, throttling cpu etc...) to get decent battery life... why not just get the r1? I think thats actually what helped me decide on the r1, reading all the posts about how people were getting to there 4-5 hours with the r2. I don't want to have to make an effort to get good battery life I just want it to last!

 

Yeah, it does suck doing optimizations to get this thing to last, but now that I have it well optimized I am getting more and more happy about it, it may need some downclocking/optimizations but it is more powerful.

 

Just curious about the different battery times. Could it be that there is a different battery built into the R2 versions ?
Back to battery bar I would like to know the actual capacity displayed here from R1 and R2 users. On Dell HP there is stated that the cap should be "8-cell 63 Wh" which means on battery bar ther should be somshing around 63000 mWh shown. Pls share your results if someone got a different number here.
Also it would be nice to know how much the battery will degrade in capacity over time. I think it's useless to have a battery which lasts 7 hours in the first 2-3 month but will only have 4 hours left after one year. I know it's too soon for R2 useres to talk about that, but maybe some R1 useres can share (would/could be representative if the battery's are the same)

 

I have a 0.0% wear on 64,530, my total battery capacity is 68,260, this is according to batterybar.

 

some how i have -9% wear asccording to hwmonitor lol designed capacity 64530 full capacity 70390

 

ok sounds good and Dell built in bat performes better than I thought. BatteryMon shows me a whopping 69470 mWh Design cap which gave me 5:06 hours of running time on the first charge. In these 5 hours i downloaded 3Dmax and FFXIV bench, installed some apps like CPU-Z and BatteryMon, Avira Antivir, Opera, took it outside (yeah LCD...it's that bad, but i hope to get used to it), listened to music...

System got optimized as shown in the M11x opt thread (CPU max 50%, LAN off, BT off, Wifi Internet on, W off, lowest backlight, turned on keyboard light, still orig Dell Nvidia driver)


Well battery life is not expected like the R1's but I'm satisfied with this result for now.

 

a bit unrealistic since I turned off wifi and brightness down and no running applications except steam I guess but here:

I just realized maybe SSD helps..

but as I browse web now with 6-7 tabs it's not bad, shows 6hours left on 71.6% charge at a 8.3k mW