Slowdown when on battery

I have a T61p with a clean installation of Vista Ultimate (hey, if you got the specs for it, why not?).

My problem is that whenever I unplug the AC power, some part of the laptop slows down, not sure whether it's the processor, the graphics, or both.

The program in which I noticed it is a PS2 emulator. Durings parts when I get 60fps (or even higher, since I limited at it 60), I get like 15 on battery.

Any ideas as to how to fix this?

I looked in Vista's power management options, and the only relevant options seem to be 'minimum processor speed' and 'maximum processor speed'. If I set both to 100%, nothing really changes...

 

This is supposed to be desirable—less power usage means more battery life. You might want to try turning off all power saving feature of your graphics card—and turning any power saving features in the BIOS off a well. However, realize this will be at the expense of battery life.

 

do you have the lenovo power manager on? it has cpu settings. i have mine on 'adaptive' for both ac and battery. maybe yours is on 'low' for battery?

 

No, I didn't install any of the Thinkpad software.

Another weird thing..

I went into the BIOS and changed the display setting to 'High', which according to the explanations on the side, means that the LCD brightness should remain the same for AC and battery.

Yet, when I unplug the power, the screen still dims.

And this isn't due to Vista's power options, since I set everything to not reduce screen brightness.

EDIT: Okay, I installed the Thinkpad Power Manager, and it fixed the dimming problem. But performance is still reduced.

When I run the emulator on battery and it's going at 15fps, when I plug the AC power back on, the rate immediately shoots up to 60.

I can't find any power settings in the Nvidia control panel, if it's even related to the graphics card...

 

try checking this to be sure. go to start>>>all programs>>>thinkvantage>>>power manager

when the power manager utility shows up, click "edit"

under battery and AC you will have drop down menus with cpu settings. make sure under battery it is either "adaptive" or "highest" for good performance while using your battery.

i tried the setting at lowest once i and couldn't even watch videos without it being choppy, so this setting can drastically affect video performance!

 

Yeah it's on highest for both battery and AC.

EDIT: I've tried the suggestion on the last post of this thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=284016

But neither value changes anything.

 

huh. i would go and check the bios settings as well. maybe the cpu settings there are on low?

you're right- powermizer might be contributing to your problems...

 

Fixed, had to tweak some additional reg values in addition to the one suggested in that thread.