Severe random lag when on battery

Hey guys,

I have a HP DV4-1220us laptop, which has an AMD turion X2 RM-72 2.1GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a Radeon HD 3200. When I have my laptop plugged in, I can play games fine, such as Burnout Paradise (20-30FPS on low), Portal (20-40FPS on very high/no AA), and Team Fortress 2 (20-40FPS on very high no AA). However, when I switch to battery, I get the same framerate for the first few minutes after switching to the battery, but then randomly get framerate drops, to say 7fps as well as the audio gets loopy, then it will go back to the regular fps and normal audio, then drop again, and so on. If I plug in the laptop, it starts working fine again. I have it set to high performance, and turned off power play on the ATI GPU, and have the latest CC 9.4 drivers.

 

Have you made sure that your laptop doesn't automatically go to Power Saver mode when you disconnect your laptop from the AC power supply?

 

Yeah I checked that, it stays in high performance mode when I switch to battery. It also happens under both Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

 

there is nothing wrong with the computer, its designed this way . you cant play games on battery alone.

 

I do have an older HP nc6230 though, and I can game fine when on battery on that laptop, no FPS drop whatsoever.

 

I have this too with my 4850, its in the catalyst control pannel, you have to find the way how it manages the power, the option will be set to best life for on battery.

Cata

 

Even though High Performance Processor setting may be set to 100% for the Maximum State on Battery, it's usually less (5% is the default) on Minimum. Try adjusting your Minimum setting first - if it still causes problems, then you need to consider system resource problems (Available RAM and Processes running) and lowering your desktop's color configuration to 16 from 32. Try adjusting your GPU acceleration also. Remember that running on a battery you're not going to get top performance for very long, so you need to either adjust your performance levels or cut back on system processes, or increase your resources another way.

You can switch to one of the other default plans to see if you get better results, or as I said, create your own. To see what the current Processor settings are:

1. Click on the battery icon on your Taskbar, then click on More Power Options. You can also select Power Options on the Control Panel.
2. Click on the currently selected Power Plan, Change Plan Settings.
3.Click on Change Advanced Power Settings.
4. Navigate down the tree until you see Processor Power Management, and open it out to show the Minimum/Maximum settings.
5. Both will have percentage settings for Battery and AC. See what the default settings are set to, and especially for the plan you're having issues with.

You can create your own Plan in the left column of the Power Options window. I have 2 custom plans besides the defaults, one for running on AC and the other on Battery that's modified from the default plans based on what I usually run, and available resources.

 

@catacylsm Wow, that actuailly partly worked. I get 10-15FPS in Burnout Paradise now, rather than 30FPS which drops to 2-6FPS, making the game a lot more playable.

@CyberVisions I tried that, and it didn't make a difference. My theory based on the above is that the ATI GPU is trying to draw more power than the battery can supply, so it ends up randomly underclocking it's self.

 

Thats great news, anything else man, just ask.