Gaming and Battery etiquette

I have the sager 8150 with the 485M card.

I was wondering about two things:

1. I installed NFS hot pursuit and got a great 60FPS. Why doesn't it go above that?? Is it locked at 60? Anyway, the more important question that I wanted to ask is: When i pull out the power jack while gaming, the FPS drops to a horrible 15FPS. I understand the power issues but this is too much drop, no?? The 485M on battery is running only as fast as my old 8600MGS. (because 11-15 was the frame rate i was getting with 8600MGS)

2. I pulled out the plug in the first place because the battery icon said fully charged. I normally keep cycling the battery - charging and discharging - obsessively, in order to maintain battery life.
What is the best way to keep the battery life strong?? Any advice??
Is there a way to turn off the charging of the battery once it reaches 98%? So that i can happily indulge my gaming as well as not worry about cycling the battery??

Thanks

 

When the power is cur the computer is automatically going in save mode, automatically down-clocking everything. You can prevent that on Windows 7 by selecting the max performance in the power options.

 

i always select HIGH PERFORMANCE before starting the game. And i did this for the test case that i explained before

 

did you make sure to adjust the battery options for the high performance profile? double check if you have. you might've missed one or more important options.

 

I checked the options that pop up with Change advanced power settings too.

Amongst those, the only one that seems to be relevant is:
Processor Power Management
This is what it says for me

minimum processor state
onbattery: 5%
pluggedin: 100%

System Cooling Policy
onbattery: Active
pluggedin: Active

maximum processor state
onbattery: 100%
pluggedin: 100%


These were the default settings and i didn't change them so far because the maximum processor state was not limited. I think thats what counts here, right?

 

read up on battery care HERE

i dont think any battery will be able to sustain anythink like what the mains power will do so as soon as its unplugged your fraps will drop quite a lot.

 

Check if you have Vsync on, it limits the FPS you could get upto 60.

 

Is there a point in having more than 60 FPS if your screen refresh rate is 60 Hz?

and I think that's best for the battery to use it the least you can (but of course, once in a while use it on its all gauge). If you use it all the time you spent "battery cicles" which is the most common measure of modern batteries durability.
You lose a nominal cycle for any considerable charge/discharge use. Charging it up to 98% insteado of 100% won't make any difference in such case.
But something that would worth is to keep battery level at some point near 50%, it is better for the battery chemistry. But I don't know any way to do this :/

 

I understand. I have doubts that the battery will be able to provide the same current as when been plugged so it still results in a drop in performance. Just my two cents.

There is no need to cycle the battery, in fact if you do that while gaming you will damage the battery very fast. In my opinion once a week should suffice.

 

This is for the case you take the battery out of laptop and you want to preserve it for longet time, in which case you should also keep it in 10-15 degrees.

 

Yep, but there also should be a way to maintain it at this level while attached.

If one does not expect to need the battery full charge (say like if one would use the notebook just on the desk for some days), one could leave the battery in an intermediate level to preserve it better.

Probably it won't make much difference for those who carry their laptops around, but for those that only need it on the battery sometimes it could improve the overall battery life. I'm like that, usually I leave it plugged to the electricity for days and then I need to take it to work away from the wall and every minute the battery can take counts.

Keeping it cooler is also a good way to preserve the battery, but for that you must detach it and then you miss the possibility to eventually use it.

 

When you unplug the laptop the graphics cards down clock as part of Nvidias powermizer, as far as I am aware although there are some tweaks available (dont ask me where I havent used them for ages) they do not remove the entirely.

The Nvidia cards always downclock to some degree no matter what W7 settings you use regarding power options.

ATI used to have the option to not use thier power management, that used to work but the battery drained pretty quick. Dont know if they still do I havent looked into it enough

Sorry mate, you will have to learn to live with it

Pman

 

Ok, i didn't know this. I'll turn it off and test it.

Maybe not, but you can get a feel for the power that the card packs.

Then I guess we all just have to deal with it then! thanks

 

Thanks for the info. yeah, we'll just have to live with it. Not really a big issue though.

Hey, really great link. Thanks.

"The battery memory effect. In lithium-based batteries this is in fact a myth, it only applies to older Niquel-based batteries. So fully discharging and charging the battery is completely useless and even harmful as we will see below."

I guess I was doing the wrong thing by cycling the battery

 

I think there is way at least in Linux to maintain the battery charged at 50 % all the time. The charging just stops when it reaches the desired level.

 

Nice!

I do use Linux a lot... Just now I'm mostly on Windows because the newest hardware isn't yet properly supported :/

 

Yup as said above your going to get very little battery time with that huge card just stick to power.

Your battery is saving you power so your laptop will use its most efficiently saving mode state etc.

Cheers.

 

i agree with taking out the battery when you dont need to be portable. it's not a solution to better fps while mobile, but it seems that you're just using it near a power source and cycling th battery just to cycle it (battery health or whatever). I used my 8150 at my desk most of the time so i just kept the battery in my desk until i needed it.

i think the battery did have one if the feet on it, but i dont recall the laptop being real wobbly without it