So does the battery increase in Mobile Haswell CPU only affect ultrabooks ?

I've been googling but I can't seem to find a definitive answer .

I saw in the other thread that only ULT/Y are effected, are I'm guessing a 4700QM won't see that large of a battery gain from an ivy bridge ?

But if the quads can be under-clocked to save a significant amount of power, I may see an interstead in buying one .

 

No, it doesn't depend on the processor series - all Haswell based platforms will get better battery life.

But - it will depend on the workflow.

If used for light/low load tasks - they will give better battery life than an otherwise identical IB or SNB based system.

If used for heavy lifting (photo/video editing, etc.) then the battery life will similar or slightly better to do the same amount of work - or, if allowed to do as much work as possible in a given time period - they will produce more, but ultimately give worse battery life (in absolute hrs/min).


Throttling a cpu (unless it is needed to keep it from overheating...) is a bad way of using any modern processor in a light work load setting. Let it do the work as fast as it can and let it go to idle for as long as possible to get the best battery life and performance balance.

Anything else is simply second guessing (Intel) on how to best setup their own cpu's.


Hope this helps.

Good luck.

 

It did, thanks ! That makes may decision a lot easier .

One question though, is the battery increase significant enough to warrant a jump from a quad core ivy to a haswell quad FOR light task ?


I wanted to get a laptop that I can unplug and do light web surfing / writing and when I plugged it in I can access the cores and use it to max .

 

I would say it 'should' be - I haven't played with one yet!

 

You should expect maybe 5-10% gains on an optimized setup, in very light load scenarios. One review was showing 15-20% less battery life compared to Ivy Bridge while other review was showing 30% gain.

 

I hope it is

 

What would be considered "Very Light Load" ?

These reviews are so confusing, I guess I'm going to need to get one test it and return it if I don't like it .

 

Best plan so far.

 

(You do get I am talking about the non-U and Y chips right? The U and Y chips are showing 60-80% gains)

Very Light Load means something like typing up something in Word.

 

Right . So basically the ultrabooks are getting the most increased battery life .

But I would at least see an acceptable amount of battery gain if I took 2 same spec laptops, one having a quad ivy and the other a quad haswell at similar ghz right ?

 

Yea, but it would be easily offset by design flaws, like Discrete graphics being partially on with Optimus or Enduro.

I think you'd see 10-15% gains in the light load scenarios if you compare a quad core Haswell Notebook with iGPU versus quad core Ivy Bridge Notebook with iGPU.

 

Hmmm, 10-15% doesn't seem to be enough incentive to get a haswell to me .