9262 Games On Battery

Rather than continuing to hijack another thread, I'll ask here. I'm planning to get a 9262 and want to know if full gaming performance is possible on battery power. I know the battery won't last long, but 30 minutes at a crack will work for me. It was hinted in the other thread that battery power could affect FPS. Basically, I play during breaks & lunch at work, currently on a 1st gen XPS. One of the reasons i want to upgrade is because the aftermarket batteries I bought for it can't keep up during heavy gameplay. Obviously I don't want to drop 3 grand to still have the same problem, so if you 9262 owners could weigh in with your experiences, or even yank the plug for a few minutes while playing Crysis and see what happens to the FPS, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

 

About the only experience I've had with playing modern games on battery was when the power went out during a storm while playing GTA 4 about a month ago. The frame rate took a big hit, but it was still playable. However, the frame rate was not as smooth as it was when the power was still on. I didn't try to push my luck and continue playing, though. I went straight for a save point, saved, then exited the game. The battery % was at around 79% after having played on battery for just 10 minutes or so.

 

When my 9262 froze on a game, it took ~50 minute to shut down, so that might be an upper limit.

 

you went from dual cards running at max speed down to dual cards running at 383/767/301 or even lower than that..2d clock speed. and it will eat up a battery pretty quick.

press and hold power button for 4 to 6 seconds.

fps will drop just like all high end laptops now.
this one is no different. but you can how ever drop the detail to medium and keep playing pretty close to normal frame rate...depending on what your doing...

 

I thought that i did that, to no effect. i will try that if it happens again.

 

some times you have to do it again...it's happen to me a few times while installing or changing video drivers. ill hold the button for like 10 seconds and be...hey!...then do it again and it will shut off after 4 to 6 seconds.

 

I will remember that.

 

Playing games on purely battery power, your sager will last, at most, 40 min. Mine usually starts beeping that the battery is low after 30 min and when it does, you only have a few seconds to plug it in.

 

I've had my 9262 for around a month now and I'm having problems with playing games on battery. I'm traveling by train for around 30-45 minutes every day so a 30 minute battery time would be all I need, but I just can't seem to get the maximum potential out of my computer when I'm not plugged in.

Just made a little benchmark on my fps in Fallout 3, and it went from a steady 50-60+ to a -20-30. This was in a small map with quite a few enemies.

On battery, my computer can last a little over a hour, even while playing games. However, I'd be glad to sacrifice some of this to improve my gaming performance while unplugged. I tried changing my battery settings (all set to high performance), but there's still (as the fps results from before indicates) a major loss of graphics/processor power.

Is it just not possible to get the same performance while running on battery, or is there some tweak/program that I could use?

 

Said above, any high performance laptop that is gaming while on battery will not be playing at full potential. Why? Because you're on battery. Imagine; if your graphics card is underclocked while on battery (all laptops do this!!) and it only lasts 30 minutes while gaming, imagine when they were at full potential...I say MAYBE a max 5-10 mins? The reason these beasts are called desktop replacements is just that...so you can plug them in to game, while still being portable enough to do NORMAL work for a reasonable hour or two.

 

Thanks for replies. Kind of disappointing, I would still like to have the option of full power on batteries and am surprised that there is no way to do it.

 

Are you tech support for DHell? Now i know why it takes 15 days to get something solved-- they're playin crysis ffs!

 

not going to happen.... i sort of found out why when i had my gateway fx model.

when on battery power, the draw is to great for the battery to handle thus causing the laptop to shut off in the middle of gaming. the voltage it draws cause the laptop to trip a circuit shutting it off completely. 99 percent of the time, the laptop needs to be plugged back in before it will even power back on. so to save on this happening, they make sure it down clocks via the bios and not just software....now i could be wrong, but highly dought it since it happen with 2 different models. they gamed fine on ac, but when in full power playing crysis...it was too much for the battery to handle.

i figure the other companies already knew this and thus created the mandatory down clock....

 

I take it you've tried using the powermizer switch? (ie disabling powermizer when on battery)