GMA 950 vs Nvidia 7200 Battery Life

Hi All,

Does anyone know the difference in battery life on the dv2000t between the GMA 950 and Nvidia 7200?

What is the increase in battery life that the intel gma would give over the 7200?

TIA

 

Don't know... do know this though:

1: The 7200 isn't all that powerful (The more powerful the GPU, the more juice it takes)
2: The GMA 950 "de-accelerator" is the slowest GPU you can get.

I'd go with the 7200 as a MIN GPU... You can save "battery" in other ways (turn down the brightness, turn off hd, stuff like that, de-clock the CPU (run at a lower speed)

PS: In the link in my sig are some posts about GPU's... there may be some info in there you are looking for regarding battery life.. don't know.


.

 

Huh? turn off HD? What are you really using then? It might either being in standby. How would this relative to GPU power saving?

 

I am not into gaming. Is there any reason that Windows XP or Vista would perform better on the 7200 as opposed to the GMA? Would the performance be noticeable?

TIA

 

for general use it really doesnt matter whether you get the GMA 950 or Go 7200. Aero should run fine on both GPU's provided you have sufficient memory. The main difference will be if you are into gaming, then the Go 7200 has a definate advantage over the GMA950.

 

I have been wondering about this myself, as my mother is interested in a dv2000t. Since she wants me to equip and order it, I'm at odds between the 2 choices.

She wants battery life, and considering the GMA950 ships with a 65W adapter and the 7200 a 90W adapter, I guess the 950 would be the obvious winner. But by how much, I don't know.

I'm just concerned about obsolecence, as the GMA950 is nearing the end of the road with Centrino Pro around the corner. The Go 7200 may last a little bit longer from a functionality standpoint.

 

Ummmm,

There are other reasons to go with the faster GPU besides "gaming".

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gaming, video editing and cad work

 

Yep, not everything is "gaming"... Some people do use their units for "work"... doing video editing and cad work.. stuff like that.

Intel GMA 950 placing dead last compared to everything else on the market.

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How about watching DVD's? Any noticeable difference?

 

Haven't really played a PC game nor edited videos. I write code.. ~6 hours a day.

 

With Vista, you have to remember that anything the GPU doesn't do well is slapped back onto the CPU. I wouldn't run it with anything less than a Geforce 7200 at MIN.

 

Well, there are a few things to consider. I know everyone hates the GMA950, but for many uses it may actually be more appropriate. I do light gaming, some video editing, and lots of multimedia use, so the Go 7200 makes more sense for me. For many, it really doesn't. The GMA950 actually scores higher on Vista's 3d graphics index than the Nvidia Go 7200 does (quite sadly), and for running Vista I would actually RECOMMEND the Intel chip unless you work with graphics/video regularly. The Intel chip is slow, but it's more than enough for aero, an it doesn't suck at your battery the way the Nvidia chip does. Under Vista, the Nvidia chip ALWAYS runs in 3d accelerated mode (just to draw the desktop) warming the system quite a bit, and eating away at your battery. Turn on something like Windows DreamScene (animated desktop) and you can fry eggs on the notebook -- something I hear the Intel chip does without heating your whole house.

But I'm not upset I got the Nvidia chip... like I said it's all about needs. I use my notebook for a lot of multimedia and some gaming purposes, for which the Nvidia chip is better suited. But for a basic notebook I think the Intel chips power-savings outweigh the degredation in performance for multimedia tasks... especially under Vista.

 

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jadedraverla - just for the record since the OP and others are interested in battery life... Can you expand on that?


Speaking of Vista , you guys read this review of Vista?

Major issues + bad things added to OS , "new" version to come out 2009: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3529

I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling about Vista after reading the above. Seems like I am not alone as there are hundreds of posts on people getting machines with Vista, reverting to XP.

Based upon MS track record, and things in general I project that VISTA won't be a mature product for at least 18- 24 months.


Issues with Nividia drivers: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070206-8784.html

 

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3056&guide=Graphics+Card+Guide+2006%28I

WINDOWS VISTA AND THE FUTURE

Everyone's talking about Windows Vista, and they've been for the past couple years. Everyone wants their machine to be fully compatible with it.

Honestly, having played with Windows Vista Beta 2, I feel I can comfortably say that it will indeed be worth the wait, provided you have hardware that can run it in all its glory. This means running the most demanding piece of Vista: Aero Glass.

Aero Glass, for those uninitiated, is a visual style for Vista that adds transparency and other features to the windows. It's VERY attractive in practice, and gives the whole interface a very modern look.

However, it demands a graphics processor with:

Shader Model 2
64MB of Video Memory

So most of you probably think, "Oh, well the GMA 900/950 has those, so it can run it."
You're mistaken. Aero Glass will only run on integrated parts at the level of the X200M (1100/1150) or better.

This makes buying a notebook a little bit trickier for some users, as I can't honestly suggest buying a notebook that won't run Aero Glass. Without it, you miss out on a major feature of Vista, and though the changes to it under the hood are much more relevant, it will feel largely like a glorified Windows XP.

 

WeAreNotAlone -- Aero Glass runs just fine on GMA950 parts. It will NOT run on earlier Intel integrated parts. The "insane" graphics requirements of Vista, have been somewhat overstated.

Nvidia's Vista drivers are still a mess, and Intel's "just work". Granted, the Intel part doesn't accelerate video (a la pure video) or do much of anything for gaming. But for standard Vista use, the lower power requirements (and lower heat dissipation) make the GMA 950 a good choice for users who don't need graphics "power". And, as I said, for whatever reason, the GMA950 scores a 3.0 on Vista's Experience Index for 3d graphics while the Nvidia 7200 gets an awful 2.6. Granted, I think that rating is fairly meaningless, but it's still odd.

I don't have a dv2000 with GMA950 so I can't do an A/B comparison on battery life. I just know what my experience is, and what others (who have the Intel part) report, and my battery life using Vista and the Nvidia part is much worse than under XP unless I turn glass off. The reason, according to many people complaining on various boards about Nvidia's Vista drivers, is that the Nvidia desktop and notebooks parts all have a 2d mode and a 3d mode. In 2d mode they use almost no power, but in 3d mode they consume considerably more. Since Vista uses 3d graphics acceleration to draw the aero glass desktop, the Nvidia parts are constantly working in 3d mode under Vista. I don't know for certain that that's exactly the correct explanation, but people who've been looking into the issue seem to all agree that that's the reason.

 

The GMA950 runs Aero Glass great. I have used it with dual 1280x1024 screens without any performance issues. Since it uses system RAM up to 224MB, it has no trouble running high resolutions (as I have heard but not verified that some cards with fixed memory do). Some people like to troll against it, but their claims are often unfounded or overblown. I do not regret having a GMA 950 at all. The heat and power advantages are a great reason to get it, and in my opinion it in general works better (not faster, just better drivers/DVI monitor support for my dual monitor setup) than the ATI X1400 in my old laptop and the 7900GS in my desktop.

The drivers are stable (for XP and Vista), and it has no trouble playing back video from low-resolution DVDs to 1080p h264 movies with a fast enough CPU (I prefer software decoders for their superior postprocessing -- unless you've got a high end ATI or nVidia card, which the 7200 is not).

I have had no bluescreens with Intel GPUs. Compare this to the many I've had with ATI and I wouldn'd go with ATI in a machine where I needed to do real work. nVidia has been a bit better and has rarely ever crashed on me, but I have still ran into more bugs with nVidia drivers than Intel.

Intel's Vista drivers were fast with a score of 3.0 back in the Vista RC1 days.

I also prefer Intel's clean preferences panel compared to ATI's slow and bloated Control Center and nVidia's confusing control panel. Once again, nVidia is better than ATI...

When I ran Vista I turned Windows Classic on pretty quickly, but battery life did not seem to be significantly impacted while running Aero Glass.

 

@jadedraverla,

Thanks for your informative post. I went ahead with the GMA. The GMA isin't slow at all considering my usage. I left it on the whole day and it does run cool.

TIA

 

Glad to hear. Did you get the notebook at a store, then, if you already have it? What model did you go with? Let us know what you think.

 

Vista is also runs faster with dedicated GPUs.

 

"is also runs faster"? No. Vista with Aero Glass offloads the GUI rendering. The GMA950 runs these tasks more than adequately (eg no appreciable difference).

Thanks for playing though.

 

I guess you have a hard time reading between the lines.

A direct quote from Nvidia: "Windows Vista™ is the first Windows operating system that directly utilizes the power of a dedicated GPU (graphics processing unit)."

http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_vista_main.html

Several PC Mags have already done comparisons to confirm that overall, Vista computers run faster with dedicated GPUs. This includes the Aero interface. Thanks for playing.

 

Also an interesting read on power consumption worries:

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/10945