HP 8530w reduced GPU Performance on battery power.

I recently posted this in the HP support forum, but thought you guys might have more insight on this topic.

Hi, I have an HP 8530w specs as follows:



Intel Core2Duo T9400 @ 2.53GHz

Nvidia Quadro FX770M 512MB

4GB RAM DDR2 800Mhz

1920x1200 (WUXGA) display

Windows XP SP3 32-Bit



The laptop is certainly a great one, but ever since I owned it it had a problem which only recently began affecting me... as I find myself on the road more. Whenever I unplug the computer from AC power the GPU performance drops significantly. Almost like running on integrated graphics... making a lot of applications (Direct3D and OpenGL) very frustrating to use... certainly not unusable... but they run smooth as butter when plugged in. I created a log file of what happens:



Date , GPU Core Clock [MHz] , GPU Memory Clock [MHz] , GPU Shader Clock [MHz] , GPU Temperature [°C] , Memory Used [MB] , GPU Load [%] , Memory Controller Load [%] , Video Engine Load [%] , VDDC [V] ,
2011-01-04 08:01:25 , 500.0 , 799.2 , 1250.0 , 59.0 , 317 , 99 , 27 , 0 , 1.0500 ,
AC Power Unplugged
2011-01-04 08:01:26 , 275.0 , 300.9 , 550.0 , 58.0 , 318 , 99 , 27 , 0 , 0.8900 ,



So based on the log file it is clearly seen that the GPU throttles down and voltage is dropped. I did rule out the CPU by running SuperPI benchmark on AC and Battery power, the results were identical. I did try to disable Nvidia PowerMiser settings, and use perforformance power scheme with no result. I did contact HP support and they said they would get back to me. They didn't so I'll try again later. I ransacked the BIOS trying to find the setting that would turn this off,but couldn't find anything.



I'm starting to think it's a hardware function built either into the HP hardware or the Nvidia Graphics card. Maybe I'm just crazy and all laptops throttle down during battery operation. Does this happen with HP 8540w? Dell M4500? Lenovo w510? I would buy a new laptop to find a solution to this issue. When running applications: OpenGL rendering goes from 12fps to 6fps. Direct3D from 25fps to 15fps. As I stated earlier I will try and contact HP support about this issue again, but maybe I'm just crazy and all discrete graphics laptops operate on the same principal and I'm making an issue of something that's considered normal.



Any insight would be appreciated, thanks guys.

P.S. I did verify that the physical laptop battery is in good operating condition.

 

What OS are you running? If Windows 7 or Vista, are you on the Balanced power profile, or High Performance?

 

I'm running on Windows XP 32-bit Portable/Laptop power scheme. I did try them all, such as Always On... etc. Even tried turning off Nvidia PowerMiser features. Perhaps this is a built in windows XP function (which I doubt). I might just resize my primary partition and install Windows 7 alongside... see if that fixes the problem.

 

AFAIK nvidia are big on throtteling max core/mem speed on battery.

The only solution I can think of involves editing the clock settings of the used clock settings in the bios.

Note that at full clocks your battery will die pretty quickly.

 

I would do what Meaker said, you can use GPUz to dump the vbios and then use nibitor to edit the perf. profiles.

It's pretty easy and should fix your problem.

 

Judging from the log, in battery mode "Thrtl" entry is used. If you adjust it to the "Extra" entry you should also increase the voltage for "Thrtl".
I wouldn't recommend this because your GPU will run all time with full power.
This might affect the durability of the GPU.

 

I did adjust the clock speed and voltages for Throttle to the Extra mode.I booted windows and everything was full of artifacts, scrambled and flickering it wasn't usable. Apparently if I change any clock setting or voltage the bios boots into some sort of artifact mode. I'm assuming it's some sort of Nvidia flashed bios, make the card not work mode. Reflashed it back to stock... I think I'm gonna have to give up on this issue. I'm guessing my next laptop will be an HP 8540w with FIREPRO M5800... I hope ati doesn't have these issues. If I wanted long battery life, I'd buy one of those 20hr on a charge netbook that can't run anything besides firefox and MS word. Agh... Personally I'm guessing the user should be able to select performace vs. battery life... not the manufacturer. Oh well... Thanks a lot guys, you were way more helpful than hp support.

 

The vram timings might be the problem.

You should try this (if you didn't already try it):
Tools > Perf. Table entries > Show Entries

Then copy the info in the for the extra entry and paste it into the throttle entry.

 

OMG thanks moral hazard it worked!!! You guys are gods. You deserve to be making $100k a year. You have no idea how many times I was swearing under my breath rotating assemblies at the speed of a crawling turtle. I'm so happy... thank you so much. You solved a problem so quickly, that HP couldn't even diagnose. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Plus I get to keep my laptop for maybe a couple more years. Yay... I save moneyz

 

Hey we do some crazy stuff round here.

Things that would make the designers of these machines ill