Only ~2 hours battery life in my 1 year old hp dv6tqe

The battery life in my hp dv6tqe (6xxx series) laptop
Quad Core i7, 6GB RAM, 750 GB, 1GB Radeon(TM) HD 6770M
is only around 2-2.25 hours max.
This is with full screen brightness and
on-board intel graphics and wi-fi turned off.
I hook up a lan wire for interenet connection and mostly just browse the internet. Not much videos also, may be max 5-10 min videos on youtube.
Is this fine ? Whats your battery life. I have the standard 6-cell battery.

Thanks

 

what is your discharge rate and battery wear level? you can check with BatteryCare.

 

If you are in fixed and intel graphic off (meaning the dgpu is on) and max brightness?, then yes 2 hour is normal.

 

@xAcid..its discharging at 9.2 - 11.5 W
@baii.. yes i run on Full brightness and with the Intel Graphics when running on battery.

 

Strange, I run my dv6z at medium brightness and I only seem to get about 2-3 hours max on my 6 cell. Also, my laptop seems to freeze when I disconnect the powercord for some strange reason.

 

Properly you are on 12.6 or 12.7.

 

with that rate it should last about 3-4 hours. what is your battery wear level?

 

I'm on 12.4 right now. Do I need to upgrade to 12.6 or 12.7 to fix my freezing and battery life problems?
My 6 cell is 0% wear while my 9 cell is 2% wear

I don't really do much either, I just watch stuff on VLC player and I set VLC to use the power saving card.

 

12.6 or 12.7 have the freezing problem for me. 12.1 or 12.1a is still the most solid ones.

2-3 hour max is normal, 3.5-4 is usually max using these dv6 just for browsing or office work.(min brightness)

 

so is 12.1 or 12.1a better?

 

as in reliability? Yes
Performance ? no clue.

 

I was asking which of the two are better?

 

First try this. Make sure all the power submenu items are activated.
some of them require some microsoft .net bullcrap.

if that doesn't work, report to AMD bug report

 

How are you getting the stuff to show up on the side? I mean, I can access those option, I just don't have them on the side like you do.

 

try preferences > advanced view.

 

I got everything except the switchable graphics method. How do I turn that on?

 

switchable graphics method doesn't matter.
it's part of fixed graphics mode, and you'll need a bios mod for that.
but you don't need it to test the battery/ac.

just make sure all the items under Power are working, particularly powerplay, power profiles and cpu power.

then try unplugging

 

I'm not sure how to tell if they are working or not. There aren't any errors when I try to change the settings for one of those. But, it still freezes when I unplug.

 

oh well. guess you'll have to roll back the driver after all.

 

Which of the two would you say are better. 12.1 or 12.1a?

 

@xAcid the wear level is showing at 42.33%
btw what is this 12.x numbers we are talking here ?

 

12.x numbers are just graphics drivers. nothing to do with your situation.
but i won't continue to hijack the thread.

back to your case..... 42% wear is a crapload !!! that's a severely deteriorated battery.
I hope you're not confusing charge level with wear level.

 

So should I get 12.1 or 12.1a?

 

either one is fine. if no likey, uninstall and install another

 

okie doke. Thanks Link!

 

I went back to 12.1
It fixed my problem but only two options are showing now. How do I enable the others?

 

What? You lost almost half of your battery capacity. 2 hours+ battery life with 9.5w-11.5w discharge rate is pretty accurate imo.

 

Wear Level is 42.33% only..please see this screenshot