MBP problem - severe lag playing games off of battery

I recently got a new 17" Macbook Pro with 2 GB RAM, 256 MB GeForce 8600M GT, and installed Boot Camp as well as Windows XP with zero problems.

I installed Oblivion as well as a few mods, and was able to run Oblivion with HDR turned on, 1900 x 1200 resolution, and most things maxed out (such as LoD), but the grass distance/tree distance etc. was set at around 40%. I was really happy to find that Oblivion was running extremely smoothly, with few hiccups.

I later installed the Forceware 162.18 Nvidia driver from Laptopvideo2go and noticed that it went even smoother - in fact, so smooth that there was no slowdown. From what I remember, I managed to have my laptop unplugged and have it running just as decently.

However, I have now noticed that whenever I start using the battery versus using the AC power, there is an extreme amount of lag and slowdown in Oblivion...and then as soon as I plug in the charging cable, it works perfectly again. I find this really annoying as I don't want to be tethered to the charging cable all the time, as I wanted my laptop to be portable.

I've searched but I have found nothing about this problem I have, and I would really appreciate any help in this matter. O_O Right now, I'm going to attempt to recalibrate my battery again and see if that will help.

 

When you unplug, you probably have windows set up to switch to a mobile power scheme, which will throttle down performance of the disk, cpu, and gpu if I am not mistaken, thus it's like you are using a less powerful laptop. To get around this, change your power settings, found in control panel.

 

You know, that's what I also thought. However, when I went inside, I didn't find any settings that changed the performance at all. I am competely dumbfounded. I also thought it was an Oblivion-only problem, but it is affect HL-2 as well. I don't know how to allow the battery to be fully used. T^T

 

weird, maybe it's a weird after effect of the FSB being able to throttle down whenever it determines it's necessary from 800 to 667...
I don't know if this is possible or not but have you tried any mac games in mac os? or even parellels? then you would be able to determine if it is windows or not...

 

Try installing Notebook Hardware control and check out the clock speed of your CPU and GPU when unplugged. If they are downclocked during battery use, you can use NHC to force the CPU to run at normal speed

hope that helps!

 

Unfortunately, I don't have any Mac games as I haven't had a Mac for years now, and I don't have Parallels either... =/
I wonder what the problem could be.

YAY! O_O I FIXED IT NOW!
I installed NHC and found out that stupid Nvidia PowerMizer was killing my GPU when it was running on the battery. I find this strange because I deactivated PowerMizer in the Nvidia control panel, but oh well, it's fixed!

Thank you so much, tse727 and DeepShadows, for being so helpful. I really appreciate it.

 

Hey I am new too, so any help was just giving back for the other help I have gotten from forum members...

 

Wow, I can't believe this. Just as I thought the problem was fixed, it's back again today. I've absolutely had it with nVidia's stupid PowerMizer. Even NHC isn't able to do anything right now to fix it. Is there ANYONE else out there that has had this problem? I've just about had it with this problem.

 

Did you just turn PowerMizer off or did you set it to max performance on battery? That may have something to do with it, might be worth it to check your PM settings in the nVidia Control Panel and see what it reports.

Either way, you're not going to get much time gaming at full tilt on battery anyway, but that wasn't really what you were asking, so...

 

I've tried turning it off in the nVidia Control Panel while having it turned off in NHC, on in the Control Panel but on max in NHC, and any other possible configurations. One thing I find slightly odd is that in the nVidia Control Panel, I have no choice to choose how I want PM to work, yet I can in NHC.



Is it supposed to be this barebones? I don't get why there is no difference whether I turn it on or off in either the actual control panel itself or in NHC. Also, sorry for the rather large image, but I don't have Photoshop or anything installed just yet.

 

Sounds like built in settings to cut at least the cpu way down, probably the gpu, too.