Faster HDD/CPU & more RAM = Battery Drain?

Hi People,

I'm like some of the others whose messages I've read on this board in that I've been thinking about getting a notebook for over a year now, but I keep waiting for each new tech update.

I've waited long enough and I'm pretty much decided on an ASUS W3J. I've read some of the discussions about 5400/7200RPM drives and battery life, but my query takes this further...

Would such a notebook with 7200RPM HDD, 2GB RAM and 2GHz CPU have a significantly shorter battery life than the same machine configured as 5400RPM/1GB/1.66GHz?

Will that extra 1GB of RAM use much power? It's more circuitry to run, but more RAM = more cached data (windows system cache) = potentially less HDD seeks, so maybe that cancels it out or perhaps even saves power?

Does a 2GHz Core Duo use the same power while idle (throttled back / power saving) as a 1.66GHz? I assume it would of course use more power while under load and running at full speed.

Any assistance with these questions and my first notebook purchase will be very much appreciated!

Thanks!
Max

 

Probably won't be much of a difference.

 

If money is no issue, get the faster machine. I doubt that there would be a big difference in battery life although I would be interested to see some hard evidence.

 

More ram is actually gonna help battery life, as the machine will access the HD less, and thus save u energy in the end. Even tho there is more memory to be acessed, hd usage wastes a LOT more energy than the memory.

A faster cpu wont really matter, because most pple use the minimal cpu setting when on battery anyway, unless u need to do harcore # crunching while on battery. The faster hd will take a little more energy, but not much.

 

skip upgrading the cpu. buy another battery.

 

Do all Core Duo / Core 2 Duo CPU's scale down to the same clock speed?

I know that with desktop Athlon 64's, they only go down to half their original clock speed, so a faster CPU won't be able to save as much power as a slower one. Dunno if it's different for notebook CPU's and/or for Intel CPU's though.

And as said above, I'd expect the extra ram to save power overall, by reducing HD activity, although it's hard to say for sure.

 

Yes, they all (the standard Core Duos/Core 2 Duos, not sure about the LV or ULV) clock down to 1.0GHz normally, and only ramp up when needed. Same with all the regular non-LV/ULV Pentium M's, they clock to 800MHz.