battery life difference between a pentium M 1.5/6 and 2.0?!

battery wise .. is there any difference between the DV1000 2.0 and the 1.5/6/7 .. ?

does a higher centrino processor, mean lesser battery life? .. or do all DV1000 average around 3 hours of battery life? ..

Bilal

 

In typical usage battery life should be same or little better may be by few minutes. The power consumption at the max speed is same, but 2.0 may have more intermediate step which may consume less power in those steps.

 

thank you chinna_n ..

I was debating whether to get the dv1000 or the dv4000 .. I've finally ordered the dv1000 2.0 centrino .. CNet did a review of the Dv1000 1.5 centrino and gave it an amazing battery life of 5 hours or so .. (with the standard 6-cell battery) .. notebookreviews.com had done reviews on the 1.7/1.8 models, and quoted a battery life of 3 hours .. so was just wondering if there was a correlation there between a higher processor and lower battery life .. since one would think that a higher processor is more power and, hence, more power consumption and less battery life .. but I do realize that the centrinos work on a speedstep principle, where you hardly really ever use the full potential of a 2.0 chip ..

Bilal

 

CNET is wrong. The maximum you can get out of the 6 cell battery is around 3-3.5 hours. You can get twice that with the 12 cell. I've never, ever heard anyone get 5 hours of battery life with the DV1000 at all.

 

rahulnirmal ..

yes .. 3-3.5 hours seems to be the estimate, you see the most in reviews .. both professional and user reviews .. do you think battery life for the Centrino 2.0 model of the DV1000 would be lesser? ..

Bilal

 

It will be a little less, assuming you're actually pushing it hard enough to run at max performance.

 

Yes, the battery life will be less if you run it at maximum performance, but I don't know by how much.

I also want to inform you, like I have many others, that Centrino is not a processor. It is the name for when a Intel Pentium M processor and an Intel wireless card are used to conjunction. So if a notebook has a Centrino sticker, it has an Intel wireless card. If it has a Pentium M sticker, then it has a non-Intel card.

Intel keeps showing "Centrino" commercials on TV and in magazines and such to try to show you that you'll be best off using their processor along with their wireless card. This is not the case. Other wireless cards made by companies like Atheros and Broadcom are as good if not better than Intel's wireless cards. Overall, I hear that non-Intel wireless cards are better than their Intel produced counterparts. However, my Intel wireless card has performed flawlessly.

I keep reading that at least on the some older notebooks, that the non-Intel wireless cards consumed less power, giving you slightly better battery life.

 

Hi Rahul,

This may give a wrong idea for many people. As per the Intel Specs

http://download.intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/30526202.pdf

Maximum power consumption is same for 1.6GHz to 2.26GHz. (see the attachment).

Also, since high-end processor has more intermediate steps in between, it does not need to jump to full speed when little more processing power is required, which consumes much less power than full power. Where as in the case of lowend processor ( ex 1.6GHz) it does not have many steps in between causing the CPU to run at full speed which consumes full power(27 watts).

So, it should be otherway around for these Mobile processors(same is the case with Turion also).

In the case of Desktop processors our assumption about Higher end processors consume more power is right.

Check this link for infomation specific to Turion.
http://www.mobilityguru.com/2005/08/30/the_turion_64_inside_story/page5.html
CPU 2.20 GHz 2.00 GHz 1.80 GHz 1.60 GHz 800 MHz
turion 64 ML-40 35.0 W 29.3 W 24.4 W 20.2 W 8.0 W
turion 64 ML-37 35.0 W 29.2 W 24.2 W 7.9 W
turion 64 ML-34 34.0 W 28.1 W 7.9 W
turion 64 ML-32 34.0 W 28.1 W 7.9 W
turion 64 ML-30 32.0 W 7.9 W
turion 64 ML-28 32.0 W 7.9 W

Anyways, this is my opinion.

 

Ah, so bascially what you are saying is that for basic tasks when little processing speed is required, a faster Pentium M processor will actually get better battery life? Hmmm interesting.

 

Yes, I think that is true, but again the gain in battery life is minimal. The reason is when all these processor are running at 800Mhz they consume almost same power. It only comes into picture if the processor is keep jumping between steppings.

 

Based on when the review is done, there are some difference between prevous version of Pentium M(Dothan 400Mhz model) vs current generation(533Mhz).
The power consumption for older model was 21watts vs new 533Bus model is 27watts. About 6 watts more (approx 30%) for processor and additionally 533FSB supporting Sonoma chipset also consumes little more power than outgoing 855GME chipset. But you get good boost in performance also. In 400Mhz FSB models CPU runs at 600Mhz lowest speed vs 800Mhz in 533Mhz FSB. Difference in power consumption at these speeds might be minimal.

These two factor do affect the battery life to some extent, but with in the same class changing processor speed should not reduce your battery life at all.