NP5792 question - My performance is cut in half when I'm on battery power

What could be causing this? A faulty battery? I have tried the latest driver from Sager. I made sure it's in high performance mode. I have even changed it to where on battery power it will use a minimum of 100% of the cpu. My 3dmark 06 on ac is 9133 and is cut in half on battery power. My Half Life 2 Lost Coast stress test on AC with all settings turned up is around 96fps and on battery it's about 45fps. Wouldn't have spent 3k on a laptop if I knew I had to be tethered to the AC outlet 24/7. Tech support guy said it should be slightly slower than AC power not cut in half.

edit: if the power meter is at 100% by the time windows boots it's already down to 92%. 8 percent of my battery life on one boot?

 

it called throttling... at low level. (the system will speed up when needed to conserve power)

nothing is wrong. it just power saving.

If you want full performance at all times... then disable any Power Saving settings.. and switch everything to max performance (like PowerMizer)

 

Thank you for the speedy response... Going to try it now. I'd like to add that every time the computer restarts that my video settings are set back to default. I think its the 59hz issue. I can set my AA and AF how I like but after a reboot it will be back defaults. Same with any gamma settings I try. This is really annoying. I'll let you know if powermizer helped the problem after I run a few tests.

 

I do not think its the 59Hz issue.... which really only affects BF games.
(and did you read this thread yet)


Remember to tell your settings (Nvidia Control panel) to save and startup with Windows (depending on which drivers)

 

Yeah I've read that before. I had a similar problem on a toshiba x205 and even with laptopvideo2go drivers it would flicker once at startup and revert back to default settings as these are still doing now. I'm trying the only set that will work of of laptopvideo and see if I can get into powermizer settings and hopefully they will let me save settings so I don't have to set them every time I boot.

 

Ok no vista 64 bit drivers let me into the powermizer settings... Are you certain that those settings could cut my performance literally in half? I'm almost tempted to instsall vista 32 bit to see whats going on. I'm using the 167.43 with the modded .inf and see nothing about powermizer.

 

i really hope this is a vista problem. i hate exchanges.

 

I am using 167.02... I see PowerMizer on mine.

Have you tried stock drivers?

 

so you are using 64bit vista as well? and yes i've tried stock drivers.

 

maybe this is just way over my head or something. can you dumb this down for me? the way i see it... during a stress test it would want to use all the power neccessary. so your saying if powermizer is tuned on it will have slowed performance whether it needs extra power or not??? how can it be enabled if i don't even see the option?

edit: the version you are using are not available in 64bit

 

yeah, when my piece of crap laptop is idle the performance according to the meters goes down and when I touch the pad it goes back up to normal.

 

if you run wPrime, you will know if it is throttling fine.

If the score is the same in battery as it is plugged it, then you are fine.

 

running it now... don't see how that will test the gpu though

 

are you talking about lag with you gaming then?

if so, then thats due to Nvidia settings for power saving.

 

How 2 change it Gophn? I have 167.43 w/ HP mode, but I still get 3dmark scores of like high 4Ks...

 

yes. but now after i installed ntune i bet the BSOD every single time it opens. I didn't even get to open nTune yet. I open the NVIDIA monitor and then 10 seconds later i get bsod. this thing is a headache. installing vista 32bit now and if this continues I'm getting a complete refund. this thing had the BSOD on the first boot. Just my luck. here is the error report...

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 3b
BCP1: 00000000C0000096
BCP2: FFFFF980036E9AB7
BCP3: FFFFF98018E81FC0
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini012308-02.dmp
C:\Windows\Temp\WER-39686-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Windows\Temp\WERAF61.tmp.version.txt

 

Did your system come preinstalled w/ Vista? Cause I ahve the same NB, w/ same OS, and I do not have that problem. Maybe do a clean install of OS or just reinstall ntune?

 

Yes it did. Preinstalled with vista64. BSOD out of the box. I am not getting any luck with tech support. I am getting really really frustrated. I'm giving this a last shot and hoping 32bit will solve things. The real kicker is it would give me the BSOD just opening the stupid status monitor. I didn't even want to overclock... just check my core and memory speeds to make sure they are operating at capacity. Thanks to Gopher because he is really keen on answering and solving problems. Very kind person.

 

ok so far so good. as long as it doesn't bsod every few minutes i'll be fine. not going to even mess with ntune. going to turn off powermizer and see how it goes...

 

I noticed the same thing on my 5790.

Flash games will run slower, noticeably choppy when running on batteries.
Turning everything under screen saver options to always on, max speed, doesn't do anything, which made me think it was something in the bios, but since it didn't matter much ( rarely use it on batteries ) never bothered.

 

its low level throttling.... you can overcome it by using RMclock (profiles) for CPU, and PowerMizer (usually, depending on driver and INF settings) for GPU.

 

This has already been asked in an old thread but still no conclusive answer:

I can't game on battery power with my M570RU (in fact all three M570RU's I had have the same problem). When I do the notebook just shuts down completely after a minute or so. And I can't turn it back on unless I plug in the AC adapter.

It doesn't seem to matter how full the battery is. It happens on 100%, 90%, 80% and so on. It does look like the time I can play is LONGER (a minute longer or so) when the battery is fully charged.

Anyone? I looked at the battery connetors and the connectors on the notebook itself and they seem to make contact just fine...

 

Like I said.....

All of this is hard set in the firmware and BIOS (Low-level)....

When on battery, the notebook will throttle everything down to help conserve power (as instructed in the low level).

If you game on battery with full performance... which I have done on mine (keep in mind I have a 12-cell)... you get 25-35 minutes of gaming with good performance.

But its best to not game on battery... it will just drain the power ultra quick.

Rather I use RMclock, and modified the Profiles... namely the "Performance on Demand" and let it throttle my CPU from 1GHz to full speed when needed.
- this actually overrides the low-level settings

And I use my modified Nvidia drivers, to get Full performance (within a well modded PowerMizer) at all times for battery and AC power.
- this actually helps your system from stuttering from high def media or heavy media websites (flash, shockwave... etc...)

So you see, its not an issue, its just that such a high-powered machine is set by the manufacturer to conserve energy for mainly light work and use (web sites, listening to music, homework, etc....). You gotta actually do a few extra steps if you want full performance when needed.

Be forewarned... letting your system throttle at full speed on battery, will increase heat (not an issue if you Fan Toggle), and make you look for a AC plug quicker.

Hope this helps,
-Gophn

 

But this still doesn't explain why my notebook shuts down within 2 minutes while gaming on battery power and it doesn't matter how much the battery is charged. By the way, it doesn't shut down windows style, it just powers off instantly!

 

Ok... that is weird.

Not sure why that happens to you... have not really heard that before.

Does it happen at the exact moment each and every time? (repeatable, not intermittent)

Does it give you a memory dump (quick BSOD)?
- because you can actually look at that and see what was the cause.

 

Nope, it gives me nothing. The notebook just goes blank instantly. And yes, it is repeatable, but not to the second. Sometimes it takes a bit longer, sometimes a bit shorter.

 

hmmm... which OS....?

Have you tried another OS with the same game? (on an external HDD works, thats what I do to diagnose if its a software issue or not)

 

No I haven't. And I don't have the means to do so... I'm running Vista x64 Home Premium by the way.

I bumped the old thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=188762

There were a few others with the same problem in that thread.