Underclocking Notebook

When I buy my laptop it will mainly be on my desk, but most of the time when it's being moved around I'll just be word processing and internet browsing. Is there an easy way to set a cap on how fast the processor works at (say 900MHz instead of 2GHz) which will save me a lot of battery life, or is "underclocking" a lot more complicated than that?

 

Without knowing which notebook you have, download Notebook Hardware Control. If you set it to max battery it will always run at 800MHz if you have the Sonoma Pentium M or 600MHz if you have the Dothan or Banais Pentium M. You can set it to adaptive whereby the speed will fluctuate based on need.

 

If you really want to max out your battery life, you might want to try undervolting your CPU, which will not only give you more battrey life, but also a cooler system. This without performance dips! Check out RMClock for this, it is really great. It allows you to set schemes for max battery, max performance etc and manage that automatically, along with a very handy undervolting tool. I was able to lower the CPU temp of my PM740 with 7 degrees when in idle mode, and more than 10 degrees when gaming... That means A LOT less fan noise...

 

For undervolting Pentium M and Extreme underclocking ATi (if you have this card) you can check my signature. BTW Ati Powerplay is nothing in comparison to the underclocking down to 100/100 or lower.

Cheers,

 

Yes, using NotebookHardwareControl or RM Clock as stated. I've used both and feel that the NHC interface is much more user friendly although both get the job done well.

The main battery savings will be from the fan not cycling on and off as frequently due to a cooler cpu. Also dimming the LCD on battery will help max battery life.

 

Does this work with Celeron (not Celeron M) cpu? I have a Dell 1150, 2.6 GHz Celeron.

JC

 

Nope, underclocking/undervolting with RM works only with the mobiles(Pentium M, Core Duo/Solo) and AMD cpu's.

 

I knew it. Thanks. Oh well, I guess 4 hrs is still pretty good, huh?

JC

 

http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml

 

Cool. Before I used this program. Is there something dangerous while using this program, in other words, is this program safe to use?

JC

 

The worst thing I can think of is if you undervolt your CPU too much it'll lock and you'll have to reboot. Also it won't let you do anything that doesn't apply to your cpu. Meaning even if it's not supported and you run it; your computer wont blow up and melt down.

 

*Kaboom* *slizzzing* hehe jk.

Anyway, I just tried it, where is the option to control the voltage?

JC

 

I don't know, I use NHC. I think it would be under "performance on demand" -> use p-state transitions. It'll be greyed out if it's N/A.

 

Its looks like it doesnt work because i cant put a check mark on it. Oh well. Thanks for the help.

JC

 

I saw a guy in one of my lectures messing with NHC and he couldn't check any of the mulitipliers either. Maybe he had an older cpu or something?

I don't think NHC works on celerons, does it?

 

No, I dont think so.

JC

 

You can not control the voltages for desktop processors, i.e. if you have a P4 or Celeron D NHC or RMClock will not let you access the P-state transitions settings. However there might be some other settings you can do to gain battery life even if you're stuck with a Celeron D. If you have an ATi gpu, you might want to try out ATi Tray Tools, which enables auto-underclocking of your gpu when not used. It is far more powerful than just using ATis Powerplay tool. My x700 is currently running at 80/80 instead of default 358/330, which gives me more battery life, less heat and whenever I launch a demanding 3D application (gamesgamesgames...) it'll go back to normal clock speeds. If you want to, you can overclock it when gaming, and underclock when doing other tasks.