t61 and Quadro FX 570M power requirements

I'm thinking of getting one of these but nvidia lists the fx570m using at 35watts ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_11761.html). the dell m4300 uses the fx360 which has half the power consumption.

Any opinions on performance between the two chips and how it might affect battery life? I hate to end up with a notebook that has a 1 hour battery.

 

The FX 360M is an entry level card, it based on the 8400M GS, while the FX 570M is supposed to be 8600M GT, so the difference in performance is significant.

As for the battery life, I would expect that the T61p with the 9 cell battery would get about 3.5+ hours for regular stuff but that's just my assumption.

 

Sounds like a rational concern by the OP. I've also wondered about this and noticed on some posts that a 128mb version of the FX570M was also avail. Would having less VRAM also require less battery power in idle? Or would it make no difference while not handling 3D texture work? Help appreciated. =)

 

VRAM would make very little difference IMO - idle RAM generally doesn't take much to power (remember, standby keeps your system RAM active, and uses at most about 1% per hour).

The question of idle/desktop tasks is more telling. Everything tells you that being at idle and technologies like powermizer should reduce power drain, and I'm sure it's not drawing 35W for Aero.

For comparison, IIRC the wattage rating for the T61's NVS 140M is 10-13W. From Lenovo's own TABook, using a 7-cell battery in a T61 nets you about 3.8 hours for the 140M, versus 5.7 hours for the X3100 integrated graphics. IMO that suggests the power drain is significant even on the lower-power nvidia card, and the 570M will certainly run at least that thirsty.

So, if we're talking dimmed screen, wifi, word + email + web...I'm with dreamer on the ~3.5 hour mark.

 

Makes sense. You think they're planning on offering a 256mb version of the card on a non Wuxga screen?

 

But how does tabook measure power consumption?
Running some kinda benchmark, which moderately stresses the video cards, imitating medium range "real world" situations?
Under those conditions the 570M would utilize much more power while delivering much better performance in the process.
But how about the generic, low stress, web browsing, word processing and other near idle tasks?
Powermizer claims to provide dramatic downclocking and other automatic power saving technics.
And if it's half as effecient as Nvidia promise it to be, then the running times shouldn't be so dramatically different, with either FX570M or X3100.
And this review seems to be supporting my point, judging by the GPU idle temps which should be directly linked to power consumption levels:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3889

 

Actually you can't draw a conclusion on the power consumption based on the temps. The cooling system is changed drastically in the T61p. The V5200 uses much less power than the FX570m.

 

Even at idle?
Then what is powermizer for?

 

Even at idle the V5200 draws less power. The V5200 uses about a 1 watt. at idle. The X1600 core was just designed that way. The V5200 is like the 8400 in power consumption.

 

And how much power does the FX 570M use at idle then?
BTW, Nvidia claims a twofold increase in performance while maintaining the same power consumption as with the previous gen chips:

 

We all know that the 8400 consumes much less power than the 8600. Nvidia can claim like Intel what ever they want. I know very well what powermizer is. All it does it lower clocks and voltage. ATI's system(PowerPlay) for saving power is way more advanced.

The 8600 uses more power than the 7600 and the 7600 used more power than the V5200/X1600. The performance reflects it.

 

Yes, but I'm not talking power consumption when running intensive tasks.
Powermizer 7.0 does many different things, not just reducing clocks and voltage.
Can you point me to an article proving that current PowerPlay is more advanced in comparison to PowerMizer?

 

Nor am I. I'm talking idle and at full power. The 8400 still uses less power. It's the nature of the cores. You can throttle back the core as much as you want but the great number of unified shaders still use more power. The shaders are also more power than last gen cards. While the 8400 uses less power at idle I'm not talking a huge difference. We're talking about 1-5watts more (Depends on the manufacture and the idle clock setting). While it's not a huge difference it may mean 30-45mins less time. Intel said that for ever 1 watt saved it's about 20 mins, so a noticeable difference.

There's no article for the PowerPlay comparasion to Powermizer. Just go to www.nvidia.com and www.ati.com and pull the specs for each core and you'll see. When you compare the latest ATI cores to the nvidia cores. ATI uses a more aggressive profile for power saving. If we're comparing the V5200 and the 8600 they are about equal in the the methods used to conserve power.

Looking at the TDPs of the cores are a good indication of power consumption of the cores.