M1330: underclock 8600 gs to match x3100 battery life and temp

Is there a way to underclock the 8600gs so that it will match the battery life of a X3100. Also, will this reduce the temperature significantly?

This is to determine if I should get x3100 or discrete in my dell m1330. I wanna play games but i also want good battery life and no heat issues.

Thanks

 

You won't match the integrated X3100 completely in terms of power savings, but you can come pretty darn close by setting it to low power mode, which downclocks the card from 400/500 to something around 100/166. That'll save quite a bit of battery power as well as reducing heat dissipation.

 

Good thread. My aim would be to go with the vertically-flush 6-cell battery, undervolt the CPU, underclock the GPU, and see if that buys another 30 mins or so.

I also can't wait for those unlocked Centrino Extreme CPUs to come out and drop in price so we can push the Ghz on AC and throttle it back like crazy on battery. But the metrics of simultaneously undervolting and over/underclocking is getting a bit complicated.

 

Wait... isn't it an 8400 GS... not an 8600 GS?

 

I just presumed that's what he meant.

 

Sorry, i meant 8400gs...

 

ull get much more battery out of lowering the screen birightness a few notches.

 

Actually, probably not if he's got the LED option.

 

Yes I have LED, see sig (just updated)

 

Hey Chuck, it looks like we have same specs but I'll prob get x3100, I don't think I'll be playin games too much, prob some cs:s, bf2, CofD2 here and there so i think x3100 will be good enough for me.

Thanks for ur help tho....

Maybe we can compare battery life btwn integrated and discrete (full and underclocked) once we get our m1330's... ONCE we get it

 

Have you seen this thread?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=139417

It seems that vista and the powermizer technology from Nvidia could do a pretty good job to save battery life...

 

I did some research and I think I found a quantative answer.
If the M1330 is close to the m1210 in terms of battery usage then the difference between a x3100 and 8400 gs should be 1.5 hours....

Reading through these forums... most ppl got 4.5 hours using all the power savings options with the discrete card (go7400 i think)....

I had to do some searches cuz not a lot of ppl have intergrated on their m1210 but i found it was 6 hours (dell said 8hrs)

This is with ppl that have 9 cell battery

So i think if m1330 will be the same or at least proportional to this.

Based on this i think i will stick to the X3100 and not reorder...

 

If you're after CS:S and BF2 performance, you won't be satisfied with the X3100.

Initial reviews are pointing to about 4.5 hours of battery life under productivity load using the 9 cell battery. These reviews are all with the 8400M GS currently. This implies approximately a 19W power draw.

If the X3100 can get an extra 1.5 hours on top of that, it implies a 14W power draw, which is extremely low. It also implies that even near-idle, the discrete card would draw more than 1/4 of the laptop's combined power, or possibly even more than that, since there would be no power draw from the integrated graphics to consider, which I find hard to believe.

I'd guesstimate something around 30-45 minutes extra of battery life for the X3100-equipped laptop, compared to the 8400M GS, but we'll soon (hopefully) see.

 

Uh, you won't be playing anything on the x3100... no battlefield or counterstrike or anything.

 

I don't know what the power draw on the X3100 is, but the max power draw for the 8400m seems to be around 10W on AC. I don't know what battery/powermizer would do.

However, the claim of about 1-1.5h difference on a 9-cell is *definitely* realistic, especially considering corroborating evidence from other notebooks. I posted a response earlier that had Lenovo's official numbers showing a 1 to 2-hour decrease depending on battery size (4, 6, 9) between the X3100 and NVS 140M (same as the 8400m GS).

The key is, if we can extend that 30-40 mins by underclocking and other techniques not used in general battery tests, that'll make a huge difference for discrete graphics users.

 

Doesn't the Powermizer underclock/undervolt already tho?
And the 4.5hr figure that i got was based on power saving mode and with max battery setting for powermizer...

I dunno... i think 1-1.5hr figure makes sense... the macbook (D2C, gma950, boot camp, essentially has the same guts as m1210) has a battery life of about 4 hours (55Whr battery) which means 13.8W draw... same power draw as a m1210

i've seen ppl play cs:s wit their macbooks... its not stellar but ok...
I use macbook as an example because its very popular and has a intergrated card and it has the same guts as m1210

 

Honestly my M1210 get 6hours to 6.5 when surfing the internet and writing at 1/3 brightness. Which is onpar with the GMA expectations as well. You do not get 1.5 hours more because i've measured the voltage of my go 7400 at 100mhz and its roughly the same as the GMA, which you won't be able to game with at all.

 

Don't forget to turn off your ethernet card and bluetooth, if you are not using them. You should be able to save some battery life like that too.

 

A co-worker of mine stated that he squeezes 7 to 8 hours out of the M1210 on a regular basis and that his record were nearly 9hours on the 9cell battery, with the 7400go and i think a 2GHz cpu (or bigger).

I don't know what exactly he is doing in those 8hours (or what he is NOT doing) but he is usually pretty trustworthy when it comes to performance figures.

 

Damn u guys...

U guys are giving me more reason to upgrade... Honestly if i can get 6 hours with the 8400 gs i'm happy (internet browsing, music, MSN messenger, 1/2 brightness)

I honestly don't need 7.5 hrs (if intergrated adds 1.5 hrs to battery life)

There's so much contradictory info on the web its drivin me nuts

 

I think it'll be crazy if i can play cs:s on my 52" hdtv via the hdmi...
even tho i have a ps3, but keyboard and mouse is so much better than controller in fps.
But then again... i really haven't touched my ps3 so far, i dunno if its because i'm not into gaming so much now a days or because the games for ps3 just suck so far.

 

sorry to bring up an old thread, but has anyone actually done this yet? (underclocked their 8400M)

 

There are data sheets for Geforce 8 Series about power consumption, by using the data I calculated that 8400GS consumes up to ~20 watts, but 3-10 Watts most of the time, while using sofisticated power control. That's a lot for a laptop. This totally supports the idea that power consumption will be 3-4 Watts less when using the integrated graphics.

If on integrated graphics with 9 cell (85 WHr) some people got 7.5 Hr, the consumption would be 11.3 Watts. For people who got 6 hours on Geforce 8400M GS consuption would be 85/6=14.2 Watts. 14.2-11.3=2.9 ~ 3 Wt. Very realistic result.

The difference will be almost ~20% in battery life while web browsing. This can go up to ~30%, if you are watching movie. Up to ~40% while playing old 3D games (any 3D game that will run on Integrated card also). Conclusion: Even if you under clock your discrete graphics you still will have 20% less battery life. To prove this run Everest and see the clocks for a Discrete video, they are already low when system is idle.

 

Thank You Very Much!

 

How would you go about underclocking the 8400GS. I installed Rivatuner but it doesn't let me reduce the clock in the balanced profile.

 

I go down to 60/60

 

Instead of underclocking and going through all the hassle, look at other notebooks. Vaio SZ700/600 series (700 comes with 45nm Penryns and 600 comes with 65nm Meroms) both come with 8400M GS and GMA X3100. Not to mention Sony has a better build quality.

 

Hmm.. I love the M1330.. the reason for underclocking is just to keep the temps a little lower. The Vaios mentioned above dont have HDMI, fingerprint readers and the premiums with LED screen will cost you twice as much as the M1330.

Also, the options that Dell gives you in terms of configuration are amazingly good and flexible.

Build quality, yes the SZ probably has better build quality (marginally) if you can settle for less features, and double the price.

 

I just looked over your data and how you came to that conclusion and well i think it's quite flawed. You're forgetting about the wattage used by the rest of the componunts to do that. What about the screen, processor, hd, ram?

 

Study physics. Power consumption is additive. Assume you have 5 different light bulbs in you room (name them Processor, Graphics, Chipset, HDD and Screen) and the total consumption is 11W. What will be the total power cunsumption if you only changed the bulb named "Graphics" to another bulb that consumes 3W more? (Answer 11+3=14)

In my original example I assumed that everything is the same except one system has 965GM with integrated X3100 and another 965P Chipset + Dedicated graphics. These components create the difference.

 

I found the Sony to be exceedingly fragile. It did not age well and that's why I got rid of it. M1330 is better in this regard.