M15X really slow and laggy when on battery :(

Just purchased first Alienware laptop ive ever owned today, had heard they are the best for gameing.. so unboxed, powered up, on mains runs really really fasy, amazing frame rates, on battery absolute e, im trying minecraft, its getting 120fps on mains, on battery 4 maybe 10 please tell me theres a way around this, ive searched and found nothing.. my graphics card is a 1gb Nvidia GTX260M , processor is i7 Q720 1.60 with 4gb ram running 64 bit win 7 home...

feel really dissapointed that i can only run games via mains, my old i7 ran minecraft better than the M15X on battery !!

have i bought a duff ? I can request a refund, and perhaps buy another laptop, just thought these where the best...

thanks

 

That's normal.

When on battery, the system downclocks the graphics card and processor to save battery life. This is state is called Stealth Mode.
Other laptops with similar specs are going to act similarly since a battery won't provide enough power for components to run at their full potential.

Also, on battery, the cooling policy is set to passive and the CPU speed throttled. Changing power options in Control Panel might give you better performance while on battery.

 

crikey, i understand the need for stealth mode if you want to select it to preserve power , but surely there must be a work around for people that dont want to be constantly plugged into the mains socket !

 

There is a way around it, but then you have less battery life. So its a bit of a catch 22, and I guess for your needs you'll have to find the right balance of battery/performance that you will be happy with. Click the battery icon in the bottom right tray and click "more power options", you will then see the 3 power plans. Click "change plan settings", then "change advanced power settings". There are options to play around with to adjust during battery and such as a minimm/maximum. The main ones you are concerned with are "processor power management" and "graphics processor".

 

You can try taking out the battery for 1 minute and then putting it back in. Apparently by going on battery mode after a long usage with the power supply mode makes the computer slow with battery mode for some unknown reasons. The cpu multiplier is reduced from 9x to 7x whenever I do not take out the batteries after I used the laptop together with power supply and makes the entire computer laggy and slow. Once you place the batteries back in after a minute or so, the performance is significantly different

 

well I'll be damned ! that appears to have cured it, minecraft now running at 40fps with max detail on, turn it all off and its 120fps, thats on battery.. why does it do this ? and why doesnt Alienware give you this help or information when you call the support line up! all they said was its the way the machines made, theres no way around it..

will let it charge up as batterys dead, and give it a good bash , see how it handles it.. but im thankfull for the help

 

Cool, I'm glad that worked out for you :thumbsup:

 

bah, as soon as i turned it off, plugged back in to charge, turned back on and its slow again pull battery, put back in, its fine again, this is madness, is there any settings in the bios i can alter to make it stick to main graphics card, not onboard ?

 

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any at the moment. Lets just bear with it for now

 

Onboard graphics? No clarkesdale i7 (which the M15x takes) has one built in. You only have the GTX 260M. I also had a lag problem recently with both mouse and keyboard I fixed it by permanetly disabling my built in mouse pad and using a wireless mouse. This issue appears to be different though. Still I am surprised you want to play on battery. I assume you have the 6 cell battery. That battery barely gives you 90 mins of usage when NOT gaming. If you game you will get maybe 30 mins max. What is the point to this? Surely game on the mains. Even the 9 cell which I use only works for abour 2.5-3 hours tops when NOT gaming.

Also you say you purchased this a few days back? Did you buy it new or second hand. You say it is supposed to be the best however the M15x is now almost 3 years old (the spec you have anyway). Good luck and hope you are able to fix your issues.

 

I purchased a few days back with 3 years warranty from Dell, its a factory refurb, didnt realise the model was 3 yrs old ! crikey..makes me feel out of date now, but price was good, £760 so cant complain, will do majority of gaming on mains, but wanted to have option of some on battery, currently have std battery but will upgrade to larger better one... just assumed there would be some way of forcing the unit to run at max power all the time, regarldess of battery or mains, i fuly understand the battery wont last long.. also dont understand why it is if you pull battery when running on that, wait 30secs, put back in, then it runs fine on battery ?? soon as you plug into mains, then remove mains it runs like a celeron with 512mb ram!

still it does look good

do you think there will ever be a work around for this? a crack or a update of any sort ?

 

I really don't think there will be any time soon. Dell seems to have abandoned all sorts of updates for the M!5x and currently only focuses on the newer M14x and M17x models. Well, this is still a good laptop though.

 

So would a M14X be a better choice ? weight, battery, graphics etc.. ive got the option for one with these specs..

M14X R1~ i7-2670QM~ 4GB~ 500GB~ 3GB GT555M

as a direct replacement for me M15X as ive expressed Im not happy with it...

or alternatively ive come across a program called afterburner, does that allow you to force the gpu to run on battery ?

 

Yeah the M14x would be a better choice for you, but as I remember correctly the current M14x lineup is equipped with 3rd gen Ivy bridges and a GT650M.

The MSI afterburner would not do anything to change this defect, unfortunately. Mainly used for overclocking while on mains.

 

Ive also come across threads saying they are hoping for a bios update or driver update for the M14X for the graphics card to enable it to run on battery, is this a reality yet ?? sure do hope so ..

 

In terms of weight, and battery and even CPU processing power in the M14 R2 yes the M14 is better. But the M14x will never catch the M15x in terms of graphics. If you intend to game therefore the M14x is the inferior option. GT650M isn't even a match for the 7970M even if there were two in SLI lol.

 

The model I'll replace it with is a M14X R1 i7 2760QM , 4gb ram, with a 3Gb GT555M graphics card in ... Surely that will out do the M15X in terms of graphics ? And you can run these on battery at full graphics, for a short while ;-)

 

I definitely agree if he ever wants to upgrade the gpu.. I'm pretty sure the 260m is slower than the 555m in the m14x he was offered. And if battery is important the m14x r1 will be much better on battery.

Would need to check I the m14x forums on gaming on battery. Honestly gaming on battery confuses me :screwy:

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