Powermizer on the M1330?

A question for the new M1330 owners....
I was wondering if the powermizer technology from Nvidia was present on the m1330 with the 8400m?? Is it really efficient to save battery life? I couldn't find any test/comment about this...
Is it coupled with the power management in vista?

Cheers.

 

It's prolly present and prolly tranparent. It doesn't declare in big letters on the screen "POWERMIZER ENGAGED"..... "POWERMIZER DISENGAGED" :laugh: It just works.

 

It's not with the 8400GS, it's whether or not it's with the drivers. AFAIK, it is NOT

This isn't Dell or anything, this is nVidia and we hope to have some Powermizer Vista Driver Support SOON!

 

From what I've read here it seems to be something implemented in hardware, accessible to the user via the OS control panel.

In the Windows XP operating system, PowerMizer 7.0 provides a simplified user interface for power management settings.

In the new Windows Vista operating system, PowerMizer7.0 control has been
directly mapped into Vista’s Power Options Menu. There is no need for the user to manage the power from multiple control panels. With PowerMizer7.0, the user has streamlined control topology along with the knowledge that PowerMizer is always working in the background; adaptively adjusting its power consumption based on utilization​

 

I've left my computer idle for 5 minutes a couple of days ago, and checked the clock frequencies...it they never changed <_<

Discussion is over here:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14424



I have SmartDimmer, but the clock speeds never change

 

Please read the pdf file you can find on the left of the page here (called technical brief).
http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_powermizer.html

My question actually was:
1/
Can you access the Nvidia Control panel (see fig 2)?
Or only the power options of Vista (see fig 3)?

2/ If you can, what is the effect of the settings on the battery life?

Cheers

 

Just wanted to chime in here -there is no PowerMizer option in the NVIDIA control panel, but the power management is taken of by Vista. There are three different clock levels:

400/600
275/300
168/100

There's a pretty significant power savings from the fastest to slowest - here's a rough power consumption level for the config in my signature.

400/600 - ~20W
168/100 - ~ 12.5W

For one reason or another, if you install nTune, the clocks default to 400/600. I wasn't able to get the power management to kick in at all. I'm still investigating, but since uninstalling it, power consumption's back down to normal again.

 

I agree with chuck. Ntune somehow fixes the clocks, and I have to manually change it if I want to downclock.

 

Okay, so if nTune for some reason disabled power settings (which sounds stupid to begin with, it's an nVidia program haha) but what program should we use to check the frequencies and stuff to see if it's properly working?

 

I have powermizer with an 8400 gs on xp. I just go to nvidia control panel, power options, and it's right there with an option to turn it on or off. Turning it off cuts my battery life by almost half.

 

Well I'm not sure about others (I'm assuming they are as well), but I'm talking about Vista <_<

 

That makes sense as that's what is written on the pdf file mentionned above.

Does it mean that you can get 7h battery life with a 9cell and the slowest setting?

 

Yes, PowerMizer is available in NVIDIA's control panel under XP, but as we said, it's tied directly to Vista's Power Management system so you have no control over it through NVIDIA's control panel.

Ranokivio - the 12.5W was completely idle, albeit with Wifi enabled. Browsing the internet, power consumption rose to ~15.6W. So you're looking at 5 to 5:30 on a 9 cell.

Oh and for PowerMizer - after some more investigating, I don't think it actually disabled the power management controls. It seems like it does wait longer to clock down - I'm basing this on idle power consumption, which drops a lot faster without nTune than with it. I think I was too impatient previously, but I would like to see the clocks come down quicker. I mean there's little reason to have to wait 5-10 minutes before they do, which is the case with nTune.

 

Well I uninstalled nTune, and want to see if it's doing it...but I don't have a program that will monitor GPU frequencies...what program should we use to check the frequencies and stuff to see if it's properly working?

 

Thanks Chuck!
Can I ask you the screen brightness when you got 15.6W?
I can't find what are the settings of the "power-saver mode" in vista. Is aero disabled? anything else?

 

Screen brightness was set to 6/8.

Power Saver mode disables transparencies, but Aero is still enabled. It also reduces the times for hard drive spin-down, turning the display off, and max CPU clocks. (Set to maximum 50% by default in the Power Save mode)