? Difference in Idle Draw power and battery life on the clevo sager 9150/9170

Greetings all
I have something of a conundrum that I can't explain and am hoping that someone can help me.
I have been having the opportunity to evaluate both the 9150 and the 9170. I am hoping to post a comparison of the two eventually.
But while looking at the battery life profiles there is something that I can't explain.

First off the specs.
The 9150 has the 3610m and the 680m. It also has the Intel 6235 card and 16gb of ram 2 sodimm.
The 9170 has the 3630m and the 7970m, and stock (is it integrated?) wireless card and 8 gb of ram 2 sodimm.

Both have the Seagate 750 gb hdd and are essentially stock and equivalent beyond that

Using Battery bar to get a rough idea of the energy draw for the two computers over time,
what I have found is that the 9170 draws between 11k mW and 17k mW in power saving mode with the wireless on.

Conversely the 9150 draws between 14k mW and 21k mW

Battery life between the two is
3 hours and 55 minutes for the 9150 with 3% battery wear
4 hours and 30 minutes for the 9170 with 10.1% battery wear.
Both units have the same size battery.

I was under the impression that the 7970m and enduro drew more power than the 680m and optimus.

The difference in draw power is anywhere from 12-20% improved for the 9170 and the 7970m.
I cannot explain this difference, or what is drawing the extra power from the 9150


Things I have tried I will add here
- Disabling the wireless cards has no effect, the difference is still the same, although total draw from both is slightly lower.

 

Enduro tends to be a lower idle draw than optimus, it's part of the pay off of zero core technology.

 

could also be due to any number of software reasons. did both systems have exactly the same software installed, apart from the drivers and the os, obviously?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

both have newest BIOS?

 

Both have the exact same software involved. Although that has not seemed to make a difference. Reloading the OS's both draw the same amount. Both have the original bios from what I understand, although the 9170, since it has the 3630m, could potentially have the newer bios.

It is not pure idle, but low power activity if that makes a difference.

It could be the 7970m, but I am not convinced. Switching global setting in Nvidia control panel to integrated should have the same effect as "forcing integrated" in the 7970m's power options, so I would imagine that both cards are completely idle.

 

Does the newest bios have a lower power draw?

Actually I seem to recall that the 9170 may have had its motherboard replaced recently, but would a revision make that much of a difference in draw power?

 

You would expect the 9170 to have a higher draw due to the larger screen but AMD traditionally have a very low idle power and it can totally turn off.

 

I will have to switch the cards around at some point and see if it exactly that. Which is odd considering that most people have been saying that the 680m has better battery life. But near 20% of battery life is huge. I prefer the 680m, but that might be enough to make me switch to the 7970m if it is the case.

 

Very interesting if you could do a swap, make sure your Nvidia GPU is not inadvertently activated by any applications (Nvidia set some strange apps to use the dedicated like steam or origin) some times.

 

It shouldn't be. like I said global settings on the system are set to the integrated card, so it shouldn't be activating under any circumstances. I have actually forgotten to switch it back when about to play, and then wondered why performance was crappy.
I don't know when I will have an extra 2 hours to perform the swaps and test, but if it doesn't make a difference we are back to square one.

 

yes the newer BIOS reduces power draw drastically.

 

read the same in another thread, ud get like an hour or so more battery life out of the new bios version, crazy stuff! maybe thats the culprit u should consider updating to the latest bios/ec on both machines and then recheck that battery life.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Great, never done a bios update on one of these.
Is there a flash option in the set up menu?

 

The bios thread has all the details you need

 

Well now I am confused. I did the bios update on the 9150 and while draw power decreased, it did not go down as low as the 9170. Still in the 14k to 15k range.

Edit:
I also reloaded the OS (clean install not recovery) on the 9170 and now its power draw is back up to the 15k range from the 11-12k range and the battery life has gone down to the more expected 4 hours?

There must be some other software thing that can affect the power draw, some other setting or optimization that was there with the original build but not present when reloading from scratch

 

Did you do a full battery test to 5 or 10%? Or is that just the reported time? Battery bar unless you use it a lot and do a few battery drains, it will only "guess" at power draw and battery life. I wouldn't use that as a measure.

Also make sure you use the Fn+ESC and select power saver or quiet mode that way not just from the windows control panel power options.

 

I have been using the computer in class, which is where it will get its battery used most of the time. Basically Battery Bar just needs more data points, which it keeps getting. Once it settles in with my schedule, it literally doesn't move, not even by one minute.

By tweaking the power settings a bit more, I managed to get the power lower to the point where I can squeeze out about 4 hours 15 minutes - 4 hours 20 minutes. Still can't get that 4hour 35 minutes I had. The 9150 is getting close to 5 hours which is really nice, and what I had hoped to get out of it in the first place, as I could effectively go a whole day in class without a charge if I happened to forget the charger.

 

5 hours! Holy cow! Nice!

 

Yeah just a tad less than you get with the msi. Good to know they have worked on it.

 

What's the wear on your battery? The maximum I got was a tad over 5 hours with most many things turned off. An SSD helps keeping the power consumption low . I can usually get a pull of about 11K or 12K...

 

I guess I gotta update BIOS.

 

Right now the wear is 3.1%. I tend to do pretty well at keeping my battery life alive. The only reason it went down that far was because I had my computer on standby, but then unplugged it which turned it back on without me knowing. Drained the battery right down and instant 2.8% wear the next morning. Eventually I may get an SSD. I have a 256 in another unit, but since this is the power unit, I don't know if that is enough space.

 

Absolutely, if you use the battery a lot!

 

What does the MSI get with the same specs?

 

That's not too bad of a wear, 3.1%. Mine is about 6%, but I've had the laptop for 5 months or so now... I rarely use the battery, although when going back to my hometown by bus, I tend to rely on it for web-browsing or watching a movie or two! So far, so good.

 

Its not bad, but it would have been less. I am kind of a stickler for keeping things as nice as I can. The 9150 is actually 9 months old. So as long as I can keep it around 5-8% a year I would be happy.