Parts which save most power

I'm trying to customize a laptop and curious to know which current or new feature of current notebooks would save the most power from most beneficial to least?

A) LED Backlight
B) Hybrid Switchable Graphics
C) Chipset
D) CPU Fabrication Process Size (nm) w/ lower volt requirement
E) DDR3 vs DDR2

I saw on the Lenovo page where it mentioned it's LED BL screens offer 2W less consumption with 25% increase in brightness compared to CCFL. Whatever that's supposed to translate to in actual increase in battery life. The T400 review talked about insane battery life, so what contributed the most to such a greater amount of battery life compared to other notebooks? Hybrid graphics and LED BL I assume?

 

B)
C)/D)
A)
E)

IMO

Hybrid graphics if you require a dedicated card will bring far better battery life. That is the reason some consider the Alienware M15X as it has a 8800m GTX for gaming while on the go it runs on a X3100

 

I completely agree with X2P

Graphics cards eat up a TON of power...the more powerful the shorter your batterylife...If you dont need one dont get it(no need for a switch) but if you want to game then definately go for the switch.

Backlights in general use a lot of power as well. While, LED backlights are more efficient, nothing can beat simply dimming your screen LOL. I think lowering your brightness is the most effective way to extend batterylife.

Another thing you might want to look into is undervolting your processor. It wont make that big of a difference if you're computer drains a lot of power as the power savings then will be marginal, but if you have an efficient laptop and a hi-cap battery you can add almost an hour to your time. Milage will very, got an additional 45-60mins on my PM 733 ULV with integrated graphics and 9500mWh battery, my friend only got 15-20mins with a Core 2, 8400m gs and a similar cap batt.

 

I would say:

B
A
D
C
E

Depending on the GPU, the more higher end it is, the clearer this becomes the main power consumer of the laptop (also there are different fabrications, and integrated to discrete would yield the biggest difference). The screen is also a big power consumer, switching to LED from LCD will make a visible impact, while the CPU is fairly optimized at idle (the most common user state) - but still comparing 65nm vs 45nm, there is a noticeable difference.

The chipset can't really change the power it needs other than disabling a few things in the BIOS (unless you mean to compare chipsets 965 vs 45, in which it would save more than the memory), while DDR3 has a negligible power consumption difference as compared with DDR2.

 

I see, so LED backlights don't actually save that much more power, just that it's able to provide the same brightness as CCFL but with a much reduced brightness level? Also, say I undervolt the processor to a low enough voltage for a C2D P8400 2.26ghz to 1.2-1.4ghz and make a power saving profile to run at the lowest multiplier with the lowest stable voltage? Btw, anyone know the multiplier range for a P8400? Can it go lower than 6x?

 

How about LCDs? Don't they consume more than processors and GPUs?

 

LEDs do save power. For less wattage, the LED backlit screen produces a brighter screen with higher contrasts. LED screen consume very little power.

http://displayblog.wordpress.com/20...notebook-pc-lcd-and-active-led-backlight-lcd/

Here the LED screen was reduced to less than 2W consumption, which is a big reduction from a LCD screen. I interpreted the OPs question as which things have the most power savings so I compared the differentials between the technologies.