M11xR1 regarding the discrete 15-min powerdown period.

Using M11xR1 and official dell drivers i have observed that while using intel or when one just switched to intel from nvidia....there is a 15 minute (more or less) window before the nvidia chip actually powers off and stops drawing power...i compared it with another laptop which i think is an acer 5470 that i used to have and the discrete graphics there immediately powers off upon switching to intel.

Anyone out there who has any vague idea as to how to reduce this 15minute window or better yet make it also instantly power off upon switching?....it will really be beneficial for us m11xR1 users if the nvidia chip will power off as soon as we switched to intel...every minute of battery life counts...

 

In the case of some drivers you should be able to set it under:
Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Power Options -> Edit Plan Settings -> Change advanced power settings -> GPU Settings

There you should see "Put discrete GPUs to sleep after" and have two options "On Battery" & "Plugged In"

If you dont have those options let me know.

 

Sorry, i've had a couple of drinks and might not be reading everything right but why would you want to put it to sleep "On Battery" & "Plugged In" when all you want it to do is switch over from Nvidia to Intel? Are you suggesting that we set it to "on battery" then unplug when we want to change to Intel?
Doesn't make sense to me. At the mo...

 

The "on battery" and "plugged in" refers to being able to set how many minutes it'll take before the GPU turns off on battery, and how long it takes before the GPU turns off while plugged in, and you can set those two numbers to be different (if you want the GPU to stay on longer while plugged in, but turn off quickly while on battery to save juice)

 

I don't believe you can set a timing for integrated graphics to kick in when it's switched over. Probably set in bios and not changeable but I would have thought that it would have been immediate.

 

There are some other settings that can be uncovered it should look like the "Put discrete GPUs to sleep after" here

 

That option "put GPU to sleep after xxx mins" exists when i use the dell 188 whql driver...but it is not present when i use the dell 197 whql driver.


btw Nautis i used your beta 1 258.96 hybrid drivers and nvidia discrete does not power off. but im still using it since the 258 series are a bit faster than 197 series and less buggy when playing new games.

 

The ones I just posted? I thought I had that fixed for M11x(R1) with them.

The 197 drivers from Alienware/Dell have the following settings
HKLM,"Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Hybrid",DisablePowerPolicy,%REG_DWORD%,1
HKLM,"Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Hybrid",DisableSmartHybrid,%REG_DWORD%,1
deleting/changing them to 0 should restore that setting. Note: HKLM = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

 

tnx Nautis, am testing your registry settings now....i now have the option "put gpu settings to sleep after xxx" , i set the discrete gpu to turn off after 2 mins..which is the minimum in the list box...will post results soon.


update : i have the "Put the GPU settings to sleep after xxx" , i set it to 2 mins, but it still 15 minutes before the nvidia chip actually powers down...btw i dont have the option "Pause before power saving" ... any idea how i can also have that option? i think that is the one i am looking for.