Does lowering resolution on the new blade to 1080p or lower increase battery life?

I was curious to see if lowering the resolution would increase battery life.

I'm assuming that the laptop uses more power to push those pixels, but if lowering the resolution = less processing power would that lead to a longer battery life?

Any Input?

 

Yes, if you're tapping the Nvidia GPU. Not much really if you're only using the Intel, which is for everything except gaming.

 

JUST lowering resolution will do NOTHING to lower power consumption. If you lower the resolution, that just means the GPU will be able to output higher FPS to the screen. Lowering resolution also does not disable the pixels on the screen, so the screen will still draw the same amount of power.

HOWEVER. Lowering the resolution combined with capping frames [such as using Vsync] *WILL* extend battery life. This is essentially how Nvidia battery booster works: it caps FPS to keep the GPU from working as hard, hence better battery life [at least in theory]

How MUCH battery life this will buy you. . . . all depends on a number of variables. I'd google nvidia battery boost reviews or impressions. . . it might help give you a guestimate ballpark.

 

Also, reducing the screen brightness can have a huge impact on the power draw and thus increase battery life.

 

I'm failing to see your logic here. If your CPU is under a heavy load, it needs more power and reduces you battery life; would you agree?

Running at a higher resolution will inherently place a higher load on your GPU, needing more power and reducing battery life.

The Intel GPU requires very little power regardless, but the Nvidia GPU is a power hog.

Lowering the resolution, therefore lowering the demand on the GPU, can help battery if you're gaming or something.

A more basic approach: if you've done any gaming at native 1800p you properly heard the fans go into "spaceship lift off mode." You may have seen that at 1080p too, but not as much if your settings are the same. The more demand (and power consumption) on any processor produces heat, which is why the fans ramp up RPMs to compensate.

PS: I'm getting near identical battery life on my 2014 as I did on the 2013, and I do a lot of gaming on battery.

 

I partially agree with you. If you're capping your fps to [imaginary number] fps that requires less load, then yeah it'll use less energy to do the same task. If you don't cap your fps and run 100fps+ on a 1080p that requires the same load as a 30fps on 3200x1800, it doesn't matter.

In that regard, running on 3200 x 1800 vs 1080p for non-gaming use won't magically give you 30 more mins.


It's the same reason playing the newest title in the best settings vs a really old game will give you different battery life...

 

If you have vsync on you can definitely reduce load by reducing resolution. It all depends on the game though.

 

Install MSI Afterburner and monitor the clock speeds at the different resolutions to see the utilization.

The next question would be are you trying to extend power for 2d or 3d applications?

 

Hi

this is very interesting.

Are you aware of anything similar for AMD cards by any chance?

 

tldr;

gaming yes (in theory)
normal internet/work no