Games not running smooth on battery

have a Dell XPS m1530, 8600m GT card 256MB with vista 32-bit.

I was experiencing a fluctuating frame rate while playing FIFA 09 even at the lowest possible settings(57-60 n sometimes 50). So today, i tried the LV2GO drivers. First i tried 180.43 (mistake i know). It made the FPS worse.Then i removed it using Add/Remove from control panel.Next, i tried 175.97. This was giving me a constant FPS of 30 only.Again removed it.This i did by using the Driver Cleaner after Add/Remove... So i just decided to revert to the original driver i had ( the current official Dell one 176.44)

But now..when i play games(FIFA 09,TR underworld demo) on AC its like what i had initially. However on switching to battery, the fps falls drastically. This didn't happen before. Can using the driver cleaner be the reason?



Any help?


Thanks a lot!

 

re: performance on battery
search "powermiser" or "powermizer"

I'm not quite sure which one.. but the graphics card downclocks to extend battery life.

Also, if you have Vertical Sync on (recommended IMO) FPS will be limited.

 

Actually, disabling powermizer won't always help. If you want to disable it, look for instructions in my guide (sig). However, the real problem is that battery technology simply hasn't caught up yet. Most batteries don't supply enough power to run the GPU full speed, so even if you disable powermizer, it may not do any good.

 

i'll try the powermizer guide but then earlier this didn't happen.So battery power can not be blamed in this case i guess..

 

Maby you got a duff battery>?

 

Look this happened to me. When I just bought my Toshiba x305 I could game on battery without it losing framerates, until I installed 178.13 from laptopvid2go. I used the uninstall>reboot safe mode>driver sweeper>reboot>install method. Then when I tried gaming on just battery it would drop from 50-60 fps plugged in to 7-12 fps on battery. So I tried installing the original drivers and, like you now I had a problem because even the original ones didn't perform and would drop fps. The only thing that'll save you now is system restore. You need to go back to a restore point before you had that problem.

I'm not real sure but I think it's when you use driver sweeper/cleaner it probably removes something important in your registry that lets the note book game at full performance while on battery. Because I'm using Dox's 178.24 custom driver ver 1.1 Vista 64 and the way I installed these was I created a restore point so if I had the prob again I can restore. Then I just went to control panel> Device manager> display adapter> Uninstall> reboot> then installed Dox's 178.24. I skipped the driver sweeper thing all together and I don't have any downclocking problems with this one. Again I'm not sure what it really is, if it's using driver sweeper or if it depends on what drivers you install that creates the prob.

I think this has happened to alot of people that upgraded their drivers and they never knew their laptop could game on battery without it downclocking since they never tried gaming on battery before they upgraded then just assumed that it's suppose to downclock because after losing the ability and moving on to other drivers the problem can't be solved unless they system restore to the time when it could play on battery without losing performance, and now they don't have a restore point.

So again system restore to get back the ability to game on battery and before trying new ones always create a restore point. Dox's customized drivers seem to work without any downclock. And what's the point with owning a notebook if you can't be away from a power outlet.

 

You get a low fps because the GPU doesn't switch to full speed on battery
There's a registry/program trick that will fix the problem, however I don't have it ATM so search for it

 

i disabled the powermizer for the time being. Unfortuantely didnt have a system restore point.And i'll try a DOX driver..

thanks a lot guys!

 

BTW, you can always enable powermizer again by reinstalling the drivers, just be sure to install the drivers the proper way (again, there are instructions for this in my guide).

 

jwest what is the proper way? please read my post above for more detail, but in brief with original drivers I had no issue gaming on battery I installed one from laptopvid2go using the uninstall>reboot in safe mode> run driver sweeper> then install. Got downclocking issue then follow same method to revert back to original driver and problem was still there. Only solution was to use system restore. Again what's the proper way to go back to a driver that didn't have issues and what was the cause why it started to downclock and finally why after reverting back the downclock issue was still there?

 

I got a bit confused..let me just clarify..

Powermizer enabled = Poor performance on battery

Powermizer disabled = Good performance on battery

is that right??

and then does it mean that the factory supplied setting had powermizer disabled coz dint have such probs then..

 

The Powermizer program is there to keep your laptop from crashing when the voltage drops on your battery...if it was disabled and you were gaming on the battery the laptop would just cut off between 40-60% battery.

So, while it would provide better performance to turn it off it would crash the machine pretty quickly if you were to game on the battery.

Factory supplied settings should have the Powermizer enabled.