Recommended Power Settings for Asus Notebook??

Hi all....I'm just curious to know what people recommend for battery saving software. Should I rely on the Windows XP built in laptop power settings? or should I install the power4 Gear software? Which settings do people recommend with either? Or maybe there is different software to get instead of using the above mentioned. I dont need extreme power savings or all the time power just the normal settings. My laptop model is Asus Z96F. Also on the topic of power4 Gear software does it work with core 2 duo mobile processors?

 

You can use any program, including Windows. Power4Gear is nice for those Asus laptops that have a dedicated P4G button on their laptop. NHC is also good. RMClock is another popular one.

Yes all of these will work with a Core 2 Duo laptop.

You have the ability to change and configure the power settings to your likings. You can play around with what settings you want to cater to your needs.

 

Thanks for your reply....I'm also perplexed with another problem. I have noticed that my battery charging light is always on. The manual says

ON= charging
Blinking= Battery almost empty
OFF= battery charged.

The battery icon in XP says battery capacity 100%(charging). For some reason the charging light just wont go off. I have tried using the battery calibration tool in the bios but nothing. Is this harmful to my notebook? The light being on is just more annoying then anything.

Thanks

 

I have seen this happen, from my personal conclusions, despite the battery being 100%, it may be just charging one last percent, thus the battery LED is still on. Think of it this way, have you ever had your laptop with the battery LED Off and the battery was 100% charged? If yes then your notebook is fine, it will turn off when it feels that the batttery is 100% charged.

It could just take another 10-20 minutes or so. Let us know what happens.

 

RMclock has the advantage of undervolting your notebook to save power. I've gained a half-hour by doing this, though I'll note that if you just want a silent notebook with some power saving features (namely, underclocking cpu usage), power4gear has the "quiet office" setting that makes your fans whisper.

As for the led, mine stays on for however long that it's plugged in. Otherwise, it remains off on battery power.

Hmm. I never noticed until y'all brought it up; as I'm always typing with a hand towel over the palm rest to keep things all tidy like...

 

I will check again when I get home from work. I left it at the 100%(charging) for about 30min with no change. I did notice however that when I shut down the notebook in windows before the OS shutdown the charging light went off and remained off even with the AC still plugged in but the notebook completely off, maybe it is a windows issue hopefully when I start it up again it will still remain off.

 

the cool thing about P4G is that it can underclock the processor waay under say NHC: on the setting "CD-Audio" it's clocked at 478 MHz and on "Battery Saving" it's at 239 MHz. Also C2D processors can't be volted below 0.950v, and that's what it is when the multiplier is at 6x (998 MHz), the lowest clock i've gotten with other programs.

 

if the battery doesn't stop charging then you have a serious issue. Yes, if the notebook keeps pushing current into the battery even though it's charged, then the battery will be damaged.

In order to monitor the power going into / coming from the battery, get MobileMeter, or RMClock (they both have the functionality).

Once the battery is within 2-3% of 100%, the power input into the battery should drop nicely and settle to 0 after a while which can be on the order of 10-20 mins (with a sharper drop at the end).

 

I had this problem with my W3V and it is very harmful to your notebook and, in particular, its battery. A third party application, like Notebook Hardware Control (NHC), which I highly recommend, may reveal that the battery wear is abnormally increasing. This may cause the battery life of your notebook to decrease faster than normal.

In my case, I fixed the problem by buying a new battery, as the problem of battery wear had so progressed that my W3V only lasted about 30 minutes when on battery, and installing the ATK0100 ACPI Utility drivers from the CD that came with my W3V. Try reverting to an older version or installing a newer version of your ATK0100 ACPI Utility drivers.

 

Thanks for your response. I will look into the NHC program. I turned my
Z96F on with ac power and the charging light is now off and windows battery meter shows 100%(charged) which is good. I was hoping to get away with just using the built in XP power control as I'm not interested in the undervolting etc etc. Can anyone recommend it at all?

The steps it took me to accomplish the above was the following:

After installing WinXP Pro first time XP battery gauge would only go to 98%(charging).

1. Entered Asus Bios and ran Battery Calibration utility (to discharge battery)

2. After battery drained and notebook shut off , I reconnected AC power and restarted notebook into Windows XP and let the battery gauge monitor charging progress.

3. Noticed after charging level reached 100% that charging light remained on and it stated 100%(charging)

4. Shut down XP (before OS completely shut down I noticed the battery charging light went off

5. Rebooted Windows and the charging light remains off and the battery gauge shows 100%(charged)

Not sure if its a coded problem as some have mentioned or just unneccessary steps to take but those steps worked for me.

Shaun

 

Note that the battery will be approximately at 100% for a while (and Win PowerMeter will report it at 100) even though the charge will not be precisely the max charge; there will be a normal power flow into the battery during that time. If the situation maintains for longer than say 20 mins, then it might be abnormal.

MobileMeter will help in deciding these things, it measures precisely the charge and the power flow into the battery. When the charge in MobileMeter reaches the specified maximum and there is still power flow into the battery -- then you have a problem.

 

I'll maybe get that program and give it a run...not sure what the lay out of is like though? would you be willing to look at the results and tell and give me your opinion? or is the program self explanatory?

 

It will be clear I think but if you have difficulties I will be glad to help you.

 

Hi thanks for your help. I got the NHC software being mentioned. It showed the current charge of the battery and as the % went up the wattage went down until it charged to 100% then it showed no incoming wattage. I assume this is a good thing. I am curious to know though in the settings tab of NHC there appears to be a box for power settings for while on AC and Battery but the box is greyed out and I can't select it. How do I go about setting it up? Would I need to disable the XP built in notebook power settings?

Thanks,

 

That's just what it's supposed to do.

Don't know about this, I'll let an NHC expert answer Did you load the defaults for your platform? (RMClock requires is, until I do all I get is a blank set of options)

 

Does power4gear work with speedstep?

 

Your question does not offer enough details for a proper response.

But yes, P4G works with speedstep. There are three kinds of settings in P4G.

1. Settings where CPU is locked at bottom frequency, no speedstep.
2. Settings where speedstep is used.
3. Settings where CPU is locked at top frequency, no speedstep.

I personally would recomment using 2.-type settings on AC power, and 1.-type settings on battery power.

The mappings are not so intuitive between power mode names and type of setting, and they also change between P4G versions. E.g., the "Battery Saving" mode is a type-2 setting, uses SpeedStep, whereas Quiet Office (which for me would suggest using SpeedStep) is actually limiting the CPU frequency at its lowest.

 

Are you sure about #3? Using CPU-Z, no matter what the setting, remained at ~900MHz and continually jumped up to full speed (~1800MHz).

 

I think the "Super Performance" at least on some models keeps the CPU clocked at max. Not "Max Performance" though that uses speedstep.

 

I find that on the W3J, the "Battery Saving" locks it down to ~900MHz, but every other setting on AC and battery power uses speed step. I've noticed that quiet office gives me the same performance as Max Performance.

 

I did some testing to see which are speedstep and what clocks they have. I checked using the clock CPUz and Windows' System properties while running a batch Mp3-FLAC conversion. The result was

• "Super performance" no speedstep, 12x multiplier, clocks: 1995 MHz
• "High performance" speedstep, 6-12x multiplier, clocks: 977-1995 MHz
• "Game" speedstep, 6-12x multiplier, clocks: 977-1995 MHz
• "Dvd movie" (only available on batterypower) no speedstep, 8x multiplier, clocks: 1330 MHz
• "Quiet Office" no speedstep, 6x multiplier, clocks: 977 MHz
• "Presentation" no speedstep, 6x multiplier, clocks: 977 MHz
• "CD-Audio" (only available on batterypower) no speedstep, ?x multiplier, clocks: 478 MHz
• "Battery Saving" (only available on batterypower) ? speedstep, ?x multiplier, clocks: 239 MHz

"Battery Saving" wasn't working for me when i tested so i'm not sure if it is speedstep, but i don't think so.

 

Thanks fabarati, great work!

Using cpuz my t5500 never clocks below x6 multiplier on any setting. Even with battery power set to underclock the cpu to 25%.

 

yeah, cpuz doesn't seem to be able to read the right clocks. Not sure though how P4G clocks it to those low frequensies since the multiplier doesn't match the clocks i get.

 

There is no "below x6 multiplier" for Core (2) Duos. That's the minimum multiplier value. Below that the effective frequency of the CPU can only be decreased by throttling. But I'm not sure how much power or heat that saves.

I'm not even sure that P4G is using throttling, maybe the 25% speed and stuff like that are just some hardcoded text labels from 5 versions ago. P4G isn't very reliable... I would trust the frequencies read by CPU-Z or RMClock much more than those reported by P4G or Windows.

 

well, i get more battery power (i can with a bit'o'tweaking push it up to about 3,5h while typing in word and like 3-3::15 with wifi on) and less processing power (flac conversion went slower). So my most unscientific experiment shows that you do in fact save power and it is at a lower clock speed.

 

more battery and less processing:

1. From max multiplier to 6x multiplier?
or
2. From 6x multiplier to Battery Saving (reporting less than 6x multiplier frequency)?

I myself have doubts about the second. But they are only doubts.