Precision M90 Quadro 1500M vs. 2500M

On nVidia's website they list the 2500M as having a 100 watt power consumption vs. the 1500M's 45 watt. Does this mean that the video card will always be using 100 watts, or will both cards consume around the same amount of watts during normal email/web browsing?

My main concern with the dramatic difference is heat generation and battery usage. If the 100 watt figure only applies when using the cards 3d abilities it becomes a non issue.

 

From what I have read that should be at Peak Performance. But I am not 100% sure. Even when the 2500M is running 2d due to the higher power consumption under load, I would have to assume even when running it 2d it will consume more power than the 1500M.

The 2500M is a more powerful card from what I have read, so if it consumes a little more power, but will speed your 3d up I would go for it.

 

Well, a little more power is an understatement.

 

I meant in respect to 2d. It shouldn't comsume 100 Watts on 2d...but it will still be higher than the 45W 1500M in 2d. I think in the 3d apps is where you will see the dramatic drop in battery life.

 

I own a Dell M90 with a 1500. I can't answer for the added consumption with the 2500 but I get 2.5 to 3 hours running a game. I am very satisfied of this notebook. I get 2 times more FPS compared to my Boxx workstation with Nvidia FX 1100 and dual Xeon.
Very surprised. Well built machine.

 

I have a M90 with FX 2500M. I've never played games but I'm pretty sure that there will be no major power consumption difference between 1500 and 2500 under normal day to day tasks. You can use the PowerMizer to manage the power consumption of the VGA. But if you are talking power consumption under full load, 2500M will use twice as 1500.

Even if you look at the 7900 GTX and 7900 cards (the desktop versions, thus no powermizer), the power consumption difference between them in idle mode is less than 5 watts.

That was my logic for getting 2500M, because even 1500M is more than enough for me.

Sam

 

any update on this topic now that we have more M90 users?
i'm quite interested.
thanks.

 

I can't speak as to real world differences in battery life of the two cards, but I know that with the 1500M gives me upwards of 3 hours during normal use. And as far as performance goes, the 1500 is fantastic. There is about a 30-35% increase in performance with the 2500M, but there isn't much out there to take advantage of that much power right now. Running F.E.A.R. at max settings at 1024x768 (mine won't let me go higher, possibly due to the WXGA+ screen) with 4xAA/16xAF and even soft shadows, I get no lower than 35-40 fps, and usually am getting upwards of 50. It's overkill for Solid Edge at 16xFSAA. Just a very nice card. I would also assume it doesn't get nearly as hot as the 2500M. I game and do work on this computer with it in my lap, and it never gets too hot.

 

A bit offtopic: AFAIK, F.E.A.R.'s softshadows don't work with FSAA. When you enable AA, softshadows are automatically disabled. At least, this is the case on my system. It's possible to disable AA in game settings and force it in driver settings, but this leads to severe artifacting (once again, this is on my system)

 

hey danton, how's the heat factor with your 2500M-M90???
have you tried it with any 3d intensive apps like 3dsmax or something???

 

The heat is in acceptable range, I would say. I don't have any professional 3d apps, but I tried several games (Quake4 for instance), and the keyboard area doesn't get hot during the gameplay, only warm. The bottom of the notebook can get pretty hot though (even without graphics-intensive apps). The graphics core temerature is 60C-70C in 2D mode and up to 85C (maybe more?) in 3D mode. It's possible to keep GPU temp at 55C-60C in 2D mode with constantly running fans (with help of i8kfangui)

 

danton47

If you get brave, check to see if you have a dual pipe GPU cooler in your M90. After one of your posts i checked out the fx-2500. It's more like the 7900GTX with your memory bandwidth, sort of a wolf in a business suit

 

It's dual pipe: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/wsM90/en/sm/video.htm#wp1006368

 

This may be the case. I know that in the game, it says that Soft Shadows are turned on. But I didn't seem to take a huge performance hit when I turned it on, so maybe it's not. And when my card was set to 16xAA (see the thread F.E.A.R. on my M90 in the Gaming section), I turned Soft Shadows on and I got VERY sever artifacting, so maybe it is off. I just know that it says it's on. I may turn AA off and see what happens with Soft Shadows still on. I have the Graphics set to Maximum, so it automatically turns Soft Shadows on.

 

I wonder if that means the 1500M is dual pipe as well? It doesn't seem to have different instructions for the two cards.

 

Softshadows look like this (third image from top)
On my system, performance hit of softshadows on is roughly equivalent to the performance hit of 4xFSAA

 

This should be the case.