T61 + T8xxx / T9xxx battery life increase

This Anandtech article

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3195&p=2

reports gains of 5 to 10% going from Merom to Penryns. If you have a T61 with a Penryn CPU, could you tell us the maximum battery life you get out of your system? To make comparison easier, please specify battery life for normal web browsing, using the screen at the lowest brightness and using vista power saver mode. Please specify if you have integrated or discrete graphics as well as the battery size.

I plan to buy a T61, 14”, dedicated graphics with 6 cells battery but the reports on battery life I saw on here are making me hesitate. My old Toshiba Satellite (2004) last about 3 hours 15 when putting all to a minimum. I would not want to end up buying a high-end laptop that cannot beat this. Of course I could take the integrated gfx instead but I use 3D a lot in what I do. I will most likely use 3D only when connected to AC but I am stuck with the NVidia gfx when on the move with batteries doing mainly Word editing and web surfing.

Hopefully, battery life figures for the Penryn on the T61 will tell me if this laptop can work for me.

Thanks for your inputs all

 

There's a 9 cell battery available for T61 14" now, but I guess it's a little extra size/weight.

 

Yeah I just saw that. Here in Canada, it is only available for the non-wide screen version of the T61 14". It is also 0.3 lbs lighter than the wide screen version so it's a plus if you don't mind the screen ratio.

Still, I'd like to see some numbers for the new Penryns for those lucky who already runs them.

 

I have the T61 14.1" widescreen with the T9300 processor and NVS 140M graphics card with the 7-cell battery and I can get at least 3 hours 30 minutes from the battery with WiFi turned on.

I was hoping for better battery life, but it's not that bad. I think I've been spoiled by my friend's 13.3" MacBook which gets nearly 6 hours of battery life!

 

Please do not forget to specify your test conditions:

- battery size (obviously full charged)
- graphics (integrated or discrete?)
- should be under normal web browsing (w/wifi on)
- lowest screen brightness
- using power saver mode under vista or equiv. for XP
- screen size 14" wide, 14" std, 15",...

 

most power engery saving settings on my t61p with just note taking i've gotten just about about 5 hours of battery life... although thats not with wi fi or anything. I haven't ran it down all the way down in a while so i don't remember exactly. oh yea i have a 9 cell. it's battery life considering its a desktop replacement is pretty darn good.

cnet got about 3 hours on a dvd test..fyi.

 

Wow, nice. With my usage, I ended up getting 2.5-3 hours with a 2.2 ghz T7500, 15.4" T61p, 120 gig 5400rpm drive, 9-cell battery, display on ~70% brightness, wifi on, browsing internet and doing general programming and such. Looking to get a Penryn'd T61p with better specs, hopefully it can match or beat my last one

 

From what I saw so far, the Penryns will get about 20 to 30 minutes more out of a battery that lasted in the 3 hours range. I'm ordering a T61 with T9300 soon. I will follow-up with my battery results.

It is a pity thought that the T61 is relatively poor on energy efficiency it seems... even if it's rated Energy Star 4 compliant. This rating states something like "must be less than 22Watts consumption with dedicated graphics. That is exactly what the T61 does from Lenovo specs. With the X3100 GFX, it's down to 14W which is significant. To give some credit to the T61, I think that most brands have the same problem when you put in a dedicated GFX. It's more the fault of the GFX chipset manufacturer which should make their chip more power efficient when idling or doing very little 3D crunching. Oh well

A month ago I checked a DELL M1330 with the X3100 integrated GFX and a 6 cells and Vista was giving 5 hours from a full battery charge. The same config on the T61 should last about the same or a bit less… The M1330 is smaller to its credit. I was setting all down as I listed above.

Others want to join this thread and post their Penryn results?

 

Any others with Penryns T8xxx or T9xxx want to drop in with their battery stats? It would be great as well to hear about those who have experience on both T7xxx and the Penryns to get a before and after idea.

 

There are some tweaks you can do to reduce the power consumption of the graphics card. I may experiment with this later after I do some more research.

Regarding the battery life specs I mentioned earlier, I should also mention that I put a 7200rpm hard drive in my laptop which I think shaves off somewhere between 15-30 minutes of battery life compared to the standard 5400rpm hard drive it came with. Oh well...

 

I will do tests in that regard as well once I get my T61. By default, it consumes about 22 Watts idle (I recall this is the total laptop consumption, including the 140M card). I will try using one of those third party CPU information programs to see if the consumption can be lowered when we tweak the GFX chipset settings.

 

2.5 hours with a T61p and a T9300. It does have a 7200rpm drive. It's a good computer but not very efficient with batteries.

 

Which battery do you have?

 

The default 6-cell one.

 

That sounds about right then. I have the 7-cell battery and get just under 4 hours on the battery and I have the T61 (not T61p).

 

Do you have any more information about this? I never use my T61 for gaming and would love to reduce the graphic card power usage to a minimum (would have gone integrated but could not find one with 1680x1050 resolution in Europe). Thanks!

 

What is the model number for the new T61 9 cell battery? Would model 40Y6797 work with the 14" widescreen T61?

 

I got my new T61 last week and have done some work with it so far although I need to experiment more about battery life, etc.

So far from what I could see, my 9 cells setup can do close to 6 hours in the most stretched mode. That is:

- Screen lighting at 1 notch above the minimum.
- Battery stretch mode turned ON (all options checked except the 30 sec display turn OFF)
- using max battery life Vista profile
-Wifi ON
-Bluetooth OFF
- Aero turned ON (Turning off Aero did not seem to lower the power consumption much in terms of Watts).
- Not using any 3rd party NVidia driver tweaking apps.

I was testing this doing light Word work and PDF document reading. This is clearly a close to idle situation on a great portion of the time it was used. When I was generating a PDF from within Word, the battery would take a hit by as much as an hour and then it would raise back.

The power consumption was surprisingly good. I got under 13 Watts in the close to idle conditions. During PDF generation it was probably around 25 to 30 Watts. Still, 13 Watts at the lowest usage is impressive considering I'm using a dedicated MVS 140M NVidia card.

So it sounds like the T9300 can add something like 30 minutes from the battery life reports I previously saw from T7xxx users with similar configurations.

 

t61, nvs140, 6 cell, full charge, wi-fi on, bluetooth off, streaming audio, screen at 3-4, aero/glass on, 3-4 applications open, usually gets me at a little more than 2.5 hours but not 3. Closer to 2 when using the optical drive.

 

oh, and its a 14" ws t9300 with a 7200rpm hd

 

I have a 2.1ghz Penryn in a 14.1" non-widescreen T61 with integrated graphics and a 5400rpm hd. Seems like I get about 5ish hours doing web browsing and simple work with wifi on and brightness turned down on the 9-cell battery.

Sounds like I'm getting times close to people with the Nvidia chip. Makes me kind of regret getting integrated graphics because I mainly went with that for the extra battery life and I find myself wanting to play games.

 

Sounds like you should get much better times with your configuration. Are you using XP or Vista? With Vista, you have to use a battery optimized profile such as the "maximal battery life" or "source optimized". With XP, I don't know how you can manage power. Look in posts around here. I'm sure it was covered by someone. Make sure you turn the backlight all the way down then one notch up (the lowest level is very dark compared to the next lowest). Also activate the battery stretch as it powers off the CD/DVD drive and such.

* From my own results, not from the official datasheet.