Pathetic Battery Life.....I Think Not, A Little Work On Settings and A Product From Tekkeon Go A Long Way

Well I'm on the road a lot and the G73 has slowly turned into my workstation. I was always worried about battery life and flights and I have stumbled across my answer, it's an extended battery from Tekkeon and as long as you change your settings it's a life saver. On the standard battery I'd be lucky to nab 45-50 mins of time in the Unreal Engine, once I slapped on this battery from Tekkeon I'm just past the three hour mark when working/gaming and almost 7 hours while doing simple stuff like web browsing and using Office 2010. There is a single problem with the Tekkeon unit in that it doesn't allow more than 19v @ 4A as a maximum current. A quick look at out power brick indicates it's a 19v @ 7.89A MAX.

So I started thinking, what if I declock and denut my laptop? What if I limit the CPU and GPU so they can't draw more than 4A together? I think I've gotten it and here's what I did.

I used the Power4Gear settings and limited the Max clock of my CPU to 1.2gHz, I also set every other setting to Max Battery Life or if available just turned it off completely. Then I used AMD GPU Clock Tool and lowered the speed of the 5870M to 300 Core and 500 RAM, all these settings had a very nice effect on not only battery life but temps as well. My CPU is currently sitting at a nice 45*C at idle in a 30*C room. Once I had these settings configured I gave the Tekkeon a go and set it to 19v. It failed so I checked the instructions and behold they actually recommend that you plug it in one setting below the output of the powerbrick. So I set it down to 16v and it's working like a charm.

With the CPU and GPU down this low I can still fly through level creation in Unreal and when I go to play test something I'm still netting 45-50FPS with the graphics set at high an 1920X1080. I'm still trying to time my total battery life but as I sit here an type this according to both Windows and Everest Ultimate I have over 8 hours of battery life remaining.

I'm sure you guys will wig and call bullsh*t on me, but really why would I make something like this up? I posted a link below to the Tekkeon unit and as long as I can burn through this entire charge without tripping the over voltage circuit on the Tekkeon unit then I will be purchasing the booster for it which "should" almost double my current time, so it would be 6 hours working/gaming in Unreal and d*mn near 14-15 hours while web surfing and using Office 2010.

Tekkeon 3450 External:

Tekkeon MP3450 myPower ALL Universal Rechargeable MP3450 - B&H

Tekkeon Extender:

Tekkeon myPower ALL Plus MP3450-10 Extended Battery MP3450-10 -

 

For me battery life is OK and normal. Two hours unplugged is normal for power notebooks. My previous one was and asus with C2D 2Ghz, 2ram and ati x1700, 17 inch and the battery life was similar. Also if you render games even using SDKs is like you were playing.

IMO, for the specs of the laptop, battery life is OK.

 

True, but 2 hours doesn't help me on a 4 hour flight

 

I suppose this would be great for office work or movie watching, but Dragon Age would crawl badly. Still, seems a great combo if it works for you.

 

It's the beauty of the Unreal Engine doesn't take much to run it extremely well