Asus W7S Battery Life

Hi all,
I was wondering how the battery life is on your ASUS W7S?
Mine only lasts a horrible 2 hours and that's with barely any brightness on, battery saving mode on, wireless on, and just very light browsing!
Also,
When you guys go to battery saving mode, does your video card underclock at all? Mine doesn't and I was wondering, wouldn't it make sense to underclock the card so that you can get more battery life out of it?

Thanks.

 

Mine lasts for about two hrs, maybe 2 hours 15mins on balanced mode with 50% brightness.

The W7 line as a whole was infamous for horrid battery life. Lotta power, small battery, horrible power management (damn Asus) combine for **** battery life.

Still, I love pretty much every other element of that notebook, and its the best notebook I've owned thus far. Sure, its graphics card died, but I still love it all the same. Brilliant, brilliant notebook the W7S is.

 

ya im pretty happy with it as well despite the horrible battery life and the extreme heat it generates.
How did the graphics card on yours die?

Also, when you unplug the computer and put it on the battery saving profile, does your video card get clocked down? I've read on these forums about how Vista has 2 power management profiles or something and that power4gear utilizes them, however when I unplug the power supply, my clocks remain the exact same. Maybe that's why the battery life is so crap?

 

Thats part of the reason, but Asus' horrible power management and ACPI is more to blame.

Graphics card died just like that. I'm betting its because of heat, and its part of that ton of Nvidia mobile GPUs that went bad.

 

I think I managed to tweak the W7S that I had for a while, so that I got 2:30 out of the 6-cell, and 3:30 or so out of the 9-cell.

If your clocks are not changed, AngryJedi, you should update your GPU driver. I had similar problems, and I used a driver from the 175.xx series from laptopvideo2go. I also tried lowering the clocks with RivaTuner but that didn't get me much in the heat or battery department. See my W7S Power Management thread for details (linked from the W7S(g) review).

I also tweaked Vista to remove the sidebar and Aero on battery power, and I stopped a lot of bloatware from running automatically (according to my Vista optimization guide, for instance).

I don't remember brightness settings, but around 50% is comfortable I think, the screen is quite bright.

 

hey E.B.E. is it safe to install drivers from that site, because those drivers are not specifically made for the W7S right?
also which driver version do you have?

 

The drivers are reasonably safe, they may be buggy sometimes but usually they are better than stock.

I used version 175_16. (note the notebook is no longer with me, I have a W7S g now, the W7S was for a friend).

 

are you using the same driver for the W7Sg?
also how is the 9300m compared to the 8400m g from the W7S?

 

Yes, I'm using the same driver and it seems to be working.

Check the review for a comparison. Basically, the 9300 is way better than the 8400 (by almost a factor of 2) which surprised me because it was supposed to be only a die shrink. Well, I suppose that electrons have to travel shorter distances so things are faster in the 9300...

 

Actually, the 9300 and 8400 has the same 80nm architecture(last i checked). I think the performance difference is due to better power utilization in the 9300.

 

Are you sure about that? I thought 9300 was 65nm, and the 8400 80nm. Do you have a source?

I am interested in this because my W7Sg review says that 9300 is a die shrink and I don't want to misinform people

The information google gives is not so clear/conflicting. For instance:
"NVIDIA plans to rename and relaunch the GeForce 8400 GS as the GeForce 9300 GS in late Q2 or early Q3. The GeForce 9300 GS will be identical to the 8400 GS and use the same G98 / D8P, 65 nm core. The 9300 GS will use the slower binned chips."
these guys say both are 65nm? http://www.techfuzz.com/roadmaps/2008.aspx

 

2 hours seem to be the sweet spot for me when i'm browsing and watching videos.

I don't know much about the 9300M and thanks to E.B.E. we can safely say it is an improvement upon the 8400M (albeit a minor one).

 

hey E.B.E. i upgraded to 175.16 and it does switch down the clock however i had a small problem with it. When the computer is unplugged from the wall, and the brightness is lowered, if I get a UAC window where it asks me to continue or cancel, the brightness will automatically go up. I tried upgrading to to 175.19 and that had the same problem. Then I decided to try the video drivers from ASUS for the M50Vm which is 175.97 and now it isnt down clocking anymore. It seems as though ASUS doesn't want the laptops to run powermizer.

 

yea.. i thought so too... same with the 9500M GS.. I initially thought it was a die shrink of the 8600M GT, but in fact, they are the same size (both 80nm).

Here's a picture of everest showing the 9300M GS - it's in korean, but you can still see the 80nm spec.



here's a pic comparing the 9500M GS and 8600M GT side by side



Apparently, I've misinformed other in the past too

 

Hi, I don't remember this problem but I ran Vista for a short while on the W7S, after which I gave it to the owner.

I now run XP on the W7Sg, without such problems I believe (it's actually not me that is using the notebook, I just configured it).

One (dirty) solution is to turn off UAC, but you lose the security advantage that it provides...

You could also search for brightness adjustment settings in the Vista power profiles, and disable them.

Edit, emporiumboutique, you're right:

 

I turned off UAC, its not useful in the slightest anyways.

I'm surprised that the difference between the 8400G and the 9300GS is so big, but thats cool, I guess. Pity they never sold the W7Sg here. And EBE, thats an excellent cooling guide, thanks.

 

That guide is Chaz', not mine -- and I didn't link to it in this thread. But yeah, it's a good one.

 

Wow, theres an auto link to a "cooling guide", never knew that. I meant the W7S power management thing that you wrote in your W7S/g thread - http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3367102&postcount=21

 

Yeah, but keep in mind that guide was written before I found out that using only 2 power profiles for the GPU was the driver's fault. So with 3 power profiles you may be able to get a bit lower temps. (Assuming you solve the brightness problem)

 

is there any benefit to using the power profiles?
I didnt notice a big improvement in terms of battery life but I only checked the amount of battery left that Vista told me and didn't actually try to drain the battery itself. Have you noticed any improvements E.B.E?
Also, the newer 175/176 drivers that are on laptopvideo2go seem to be suffering from downclocking even while playing a game so im a bit hesitant to upgrade to those. ASUS drivers on the other hand don't allow power profiles so I'm guessing they don't see any benefit either.

 

I wasn't aiming so much for battery savings as for heat savings, W7S is a hot laptop... I don't think I checked for battery life improvements.

 

ya I did notice the temperatures drop quite a bit,
however I prefer that my video card overheats as soon as possible seeing as how it might be one of the defective 8400m chips, so that it will still be under warranty lol