Underclocking saves battery?

I really want to get the most battery life out of notebooks without opting for the 9 cell battery because I despise the way it looks... I mean utterly despise it... It 's almost unbearable to me... So I use 6 cells.

Back to my point! Since the laptop will have discrete graphics, which I know decreases the battery life dramatically, would underclocking the GPU give me any extra battery life?

If it does save battery life, how low can I underclock it without threatening the integrity of the GPU and how much would I have to underclock to make a difference?

I dunno much about battery life on notebooks so please don't bash me if this seems like a simple question to you. I'm in the process of being converted from my desktop! =P

 

Yeah,with lower clocks save some battery,but don't worry..

The vgas have 2d 3d low and 3d performance modes,and according to what you're doing they automatically change in order to have the best battery management.

 

uderclocking and in conjunction with under volting is what helps

 

But if it's underclocked doesn't it use less voltage anyway?

And thank you for the quick replies! I appreciate it... I don't know if the card automatically underclocks though... anyway I can check it?

 

no it still recieves the same voltage check out this
it has details EX.speed stepping proc may run at 800 mhz its still using same voltage

 

So I gotta go into the BIOS and change it all there...? You gotta be kidding me... LOL. I just wanted something simple for when I'm not playing any games. I don't wanna have to restart to go to the BIOS everytime I wanna put the voltage back to play the gameee! Pooo!

 

read down in that link and youll see how but you wont be able to randomly change it like that

 

That was all CPU voltage, I'm talking more about GPU... And I'm not sure if the Pentium M has the same power and consumption levels as a Core 2 Duo... I'm really cautious with something I spent almost $2,000 on.

 

you still any thing you use exceot bios will have to preform stabubility test 1.5-2 hours long

 

Does the CPU lose any of it's processing power?

 

if you do not underclock it may be safe to under volt .200 volts

 

when you underclock, your GPU generates less heat, which means your fans dont kick one every 5 seconds, which means you will be a little more battery. I mean, we are talking 30 minutes at most. But if you overclocked, it would be decreasing your battery by i dont know, maybe 30 minutes to an hour and a half depending on how drematicly you overclocked. The main thing with your battery, is brightness. Just keep that low.

 

30 mins is a lot! LOL. So if I undervolt the CPU and underclock the gfx card, you think I could squeeze another 30-40 minutes out of that bad boy?

 

Has anyone tried Rivatuner? The M1330 is not available with the X3100 in New-Zealand and I was told that this software might do the trick and make the 8400M as good as the x3100 in terms of battery-life...Anyone has any experience with this software?

 

You can use 'Notebook Hardware Control' to undervolt! Thats what i use! less heat more battery life..

 

My Pentium M is underclocked to 1.212V at 2.0 Ghz and 0.908V at 800 Mhz. I use a 9-cell battery, which I really like because it elevates my laptop by another 2 centimeters. I get a little less than 4 hours of battery life before my battery dips to 15%. This is when my Wifi is on and screen brightness is set to highest. And oh, this is when I use the GMA900. Mine runs out of juice in a little over 2 hours and 30 minutes when using the Geforce Go 6600.

 

Why don't you just configure weaker graphics like a low end card or even an integrated solution?

 

Because I want the power when I wanna play gamesss!!

 

Nvidia already have pretty intelligent power saving features.

Here is a short brief of how it works. Its called PowerMizer.

Undervolting a CPU is known to me, I've never heard of undervolting a GPU. I'd recommend against it. Really, just turn down your screen brightness a few notches and you'll get a great 30-60 minute boost. All of this undervolting seems silly and dangerous. How many hours do you need? Don't 1330 models already run 4+ hours on battery?

 

Well wouldn't it be a big process to underclock everytime you need mobility, then clock it to its defaults when you want to game? I don't know, that would be quite a hassle for me; perhaps for you it isn't...

 

Hybrid GPU's? Cool, never heard of that... it's actually quite brilliant!

 

Not sure if it supports nVidia, probably not, but ati tool tray can automatically overclock 3d apps and underclock 2d. Works wonders for me. Goes from just handling windows vista to running Oblivion on near full.

 

@ J-Bytes

Yeah. I think the Uniwill 259EN is the only laptop with this setup in existance. XD Oh, it's better known as the Alienware M5500.

Back at the topic. Wait, so you mean if I turn down my screen brightness to the lowest I can get close to 6 hours of battery life?! O_O Insane... And I never heard of GPU underclocking before, well, except for the NVIDIA Powermizer which is useless to me because I only use the GF Go 6600 when it's plugged to an outlet.