New m11xr3 owner my fps is less on battery than power

Hi there, sorry for being a noob, im a both new to alienware and pc gaimg. I have been amazed by this little machine but have noticed a severe lack in performance when not plugged in. i have tried alein fusion on high performance, nvidea options on global high perfromance and battery options on high performance.

Taking Skyrim on fraps as my example i am getting about 35 fps on medium setting as soon as i unplug the power it drops to about 10 fps.

I keep looking through all of the above 3 settings and everything for power and battery is the same. Sorry if this is a simple fix but like i say im new to it all. (love it though)

Any advice will be greatly appreciated as i dont want to wear my battery out having it plugged in all the time???????????

p.s, sorry if posted in wrong area

 

That's normal, your computer is not made to run games on battery. When you are playing games you need to keep it plugged in... Here are some gaming tips that you might find useful.

 

The abilities of the R3 are higher than the R1... on the R1 for example you could in some games get reasonable performance in battery mode. This is in part because of the lower power consumption. Even with the reduction in run time it was still long enough to game on.

For the R3 I suspect that even if you get it to 80-90-100% performance on battery the runtime will be very low. Likely very hot hot hot also.

For tweaks, I do not have the R3 so I cannot say what would work or not (nor do I game on battery). I can tell you though that you will not be able to match the performance. A lower demanding game would likely do well enough though.

 

I thought the m11x r3 was meant to run exactly the same on battery as plugged in, my mistake. Any tips on how to conserve my battery as I will need to have cable plugged in a lot ? Thanks again

 

Yes it will all you need to do is to turn the graphics settings from Balanced to High performance. When you are running on battery the windows settings will run at 203/324mhz instead of the stock 672/900 to save power.

Just go here and change it for when you are running on battery. It is similar to what AMD have as Powerplay.

Power options -> Change Plan Settings -> Change Advanced Power Settings -> Graphics Processor -> GPU Power State -> Change to High Performance.

I run all games exactly the same as on AC power at my overclocks 800/1100. Expect it to half your battery time though.

 

Your system on battery is still a good performer. How to extract more perf I can't say (don't have one).

..batts..
If you mean to "save" the batt so it lasts for years of use there are not a lot of things you can do. There are some that report that turning off charging or occasional charge cycling results in the longest life. Hard to prove as no two batteries will perform exactly the same.

IMO, you get 2-3 years of usable battery in most cases. More than that is rare and a bonus. Shelf life if nothing else kills them. This is why you only get 1 year warranty for battery.

If you mean how to improve the run time between charges you can search here for all the tips but off the top of my head:
power saving plan
brightness (see above)
disable wifi/bt if not using
keep bottom of unit clear... if it gets hot the fan will run

Hope that helps. Throwing my opinion in since things seemed to have gone quiet lately. Better if the R3 guys chime in.

Edit: there he is!

 

Thanks for the tips.

I was just concerned that after having it plugged in all the time I would one day unplug it and the battery would only last 5 mins

 

Yiddo I tried that but problem still persists

 

That should fix it as it does for me are you sure you changed the battery settings for the profile you are using? Make sure when you open the advanced power settings at the top it says whatever profile you are using as it will automatically revert to high performance. You also need to change this for the Intel HD graphics as well or this will clock down while gaming.

Are you certain that your games are running on the 540M GT and not the HD card?

 

I will have a look Yiddo and let u know all my settings. Thanks for your help it is much appreciated.

 

Just had a look and all settings are the same for on power and on battery. I'm confused now as I'm sure the whole point of the machine is to run on battery.

I'm sure I am just missing something but have now checked

Battery setting
Alien fusion
Intel graphics
Nvidea graphics

 

There is no reason at all why you would be getting lower performance on battery. All you need to do is flip open AlienFusion and thoroughly configure your profiles. Make sure you run it on High Performance mode, dedicated GPU on performance, CPU state at 100%, ect. The reason why you're lagging on battery is because by default the battery profile throttles the CPU and GPU.

 

Rishwin thank you for your reply. I have just checked these settings and the problem remains. I have had the system for about two weeks and have not changed much apart from checking all settings were the same for battery and power.

Think I will just have to keep tinkering till I find the problem. Apart from this the system is amazing

 

Run HWINFO and tick the select the sensors when loading it up. Play a game and then can you post a screenshot of your results on the sensor so I can have a look.

You are looking for something that looks like this.



Need to be able to see the GPU settings. It still sounds as though it is running on the integrated card while you are gaming they are not actually that far apart the Intel HD 3000 and the 540M GT the biggest difference you would notice if it is running on the GT would be that your fan would kick in loudly if not it does not sound like it is.

 

Will try this, must admit my fan never sounds loud, I do have nvidea gpu as a global setting, will get back to you.

 

My technical ignorance is astounding, I have no idea how to do what you ask. Surely skyrim at 35 fps the nvidea gpu must be running when plugged in?

 

Is this advice correct. I am running skyrim on medium settings at about 35 fps, does that mean the nvidea gpu is working ? Just. Not working when unplugged, a lot of people seem to think it should run the same on battery (this is and i5 m11x r3 with 6 gig ram)

 

Just changed global setting to intel gpu and the fps seems about the same, worried now

 

You need to whitelist the game itself so next to the global settings you have Program Settings. Find the Skyrim.exe and make sure it is set to High performance Nvidia Processor.

It could be fine or it may not be running correctly but to confirm that we need to be able to see the GPU clocks. Otherwise:

Install HWINFO from the link above.
Open the program and when it opens tick the box that says sensors and hit ok.
Once the sensors come up they should look like that picture above ^
Leave it running and play skyrim for a couple of minutes and then exit and take a screenshot of the Section that reads GPU.

Post it on here if you can

 

I will try, just installed latest drivers from nvidea website and it's now running like a dream. Slightly better fps plugged in and matching on battery. Hope this has been the answer, nvidea had auto updates selected but still I had to install them.

Thank you so much for all your help, and I may need you again, will try get a screenshot for you.

Again, please ignore my ignorance

 

Running like a dream, I was getting about 30 fps on battery on black ops I'm now getting nearer 60. What a machine. Can really enjoy it now.

 

haha back on page 1 I meant to say have your updated drivers? Glad its fixed probably reinstalling them changed whatever setting was causing the problem.

 

Yiddo, I know, told you I have no idea. What I thought was a great machine is now amazing. I ignored updating the driver because it was a new machine and it was telling me driver updates had been checked as recently as today.

I now cant fault it. Gets a little hot but using a cooling pad so should be good.

Thank you again for the advice, you got me hunting for the answer.

 

No no what I meant was I should have mentioned drivers to begin with I just assumed it was something else a sign of old age.