Vaio SZ Speed Vs. Stamina

I have seen many conflicting reports about the Speed and Stamina modes included on SZ models. Some people have said that they save no battery on Stamina and some people say the gains are minimal, while some say the gains are huge. I really couldn't get any consistent answers so I decided to conduct my own test. I tried to get as much battery life out of each of them while having the laptop still be "usable." The term usable will be different to everybody in terms of settings. For me I didn't care if brightness as all the way down but I NEED the WLAN. I decided I'd just post my settings and results and maybe it could help some of you.

Speed Mode (Geforce 7400 downclocked to 225/350)
Brightness all the way down (I like this setting even when on AC. The brightness hurts my eyes =P)
Connected to a Wireless G network
Bluetooth disabled
Two Youtube Videos (Both ~3m40s)
Basic web chatting (Chatting with 3 people on AIM
Surfing the Web (multiple web tabs and pages open at once)
Muted the sound (except when watching the youtube videos, then sound at 20%
Aero Disabled
Undervolted CPU (.850V at 1ghz 1.0V at 2ghz)
Windows Sidebar disabled

Battery down to 5% at 3h 25m



Stamina Mode
Brightness all the way down
Connected to Wireless G network
Bluetooth Disabled
Watched the same 2 youtube videos
Basica web chatting. AIM and MSN simultaneously
Surfing the web. (multiple tabs and pages on Firefox)
Sound muted (Except when watching videos, then sound at 20%)
Aero disabled
Undervolted CPU (.850V at 1ghz 1.0V at 2ghz)
Windows Sidebar disabled

Battery down to 5% at 4h 04m

By request I'll be adding some more results along with the settings I had to achieve those results! I hope this helps someone... anyone!

Speed Mode (Underclocked to 225/350)
Maximum Brightness
Connected to Wireless G Network
Bluetooth Disabled
Same two Youtube Videos
Web chatting (MSN and AIM)
Surfing the web (Multiple tabs in Firefox)
Muted Sound (Except when watching videos, then at 20%)
Aero disabled
Undervolted CPU (.850V at 1ghz 1.0V at 2ghz)
Windows Sidebar disabled

Battery down to 5% at 2h 41m



Speed Mode STOCK SPEEDS
Brightness all the way down
Connected to a Wireless G network
Bluetooth disabled
Two Youtube Videos (Both ~3m40s)
Basic web chatting AIM and MSN
Surfing the Web (multiple web tabs and pages open at once)
Muted the sound (except when watching the youtube videos, then sound at 20%)
Aero Disabled
Undervolted CPU (.850V at 1ghz 1.0V at 2ghz)
Windows Sidebar disabled

Battery down to 5% at 3h 08m



UPDATE:

It seems I had forgotten to exit the sidebar when on speed mode which in turn DRAMATICALLY decreases battery life. I am currently re-draining the battery on speed mode and I will post the new time. Sorry for the mix-up.

UPDATE 2:

Okay I reran the battery drain without the windows sidebar and I got a WHOPPING 31 extra minutes of battery life! It only had 2 gadgets! Wow... that's a lot of battery for a relatively useless program.

So now that I ran the drain without the sidebar (Like I did with the Stamina mode) And the results are more of what I expected. I got about 40 more minutes of battery life in Stamina mode than Speed mode... and that was with the downclocked GPU. If I am bored enough I will do a stock GPU test for anyone whose interested.

In case anyone was wondering, the previous time for the Speed mode with the sidebar was 2h 54m. I still can't believe that program ate up so much battery.

I hope this helps anyone interested in buying a Vaio with a hybrid graphics system or just anyone interested in the results!

 

That's not too bad. It looks like a viable travel option, if you get the extended battery.

 

The only thing is the extended battery is $299 USD!!! But I think it's pretty good traveler even with the standard battery if you can sacrifice the pretty interface and some screen brightness.

 

Thanks for the work.

I was quite interested by this subject recently
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=73532

I was also expecting less difference between the 2 modes (like 20%<45min).
Do you confirm powermizer is not present on SZ laptops? Do you run XP or vista?


Cheers

 

I use Windows Vista Business but I disabled the Aero effects to save battery.

I used NHC the undervolt my processor

And the Nvidia Powermizer doesn't work for some reason so I used RivaTuner to underclock my GPU.

 

How did you get .850V in NHC? I have only .950V in there.. Nothing below this value...

 

I honestly have no idea. Many people told me their processor is locked at .950v but when I go to the dropdown menu I see .850v. I dunno why... sorry.

 

I updated the original post to include my new test results. Check it out whenever you want.

 

Awesome work Sprintguy1376. This gives potential buyers like me more confidence that the SZ can achieve up to around 4 hours battery life using standard battery. Repped!

So just to confirm. Switching off the sidebar added an extra 40 minutes to both Speed & Staminar modes, so the final results are: 4h 05mins, and 4h 44mins?

 

It was 4h 04m with Stamina mode (I am sure you could achieve more with some tweaks and disabling devices) And 3h 25m on speed mode. The battery is MUCH less when you have Aero and the sidebar enabled so I HIGHLY reccomend changing the color to 16-bit, disabling aero, and exiting the sidebar and you'll have yourself a nice battery life indeed. All with a standard battery!

Edit:

Also remember this is without the LED screen! So if you get the LED screen you may achieve even better battery life! Also if you used an ethernet connection rather than wireless connection, battery life goes up again!

 

Excellent work! Appreciate the effort and the info.

Repped!

 

Thanks for the update!

If you get bored and want to do some more experiments, I would have 4 suggestions:
1/ Speed mode, same conditions but without downclocking the 7400.
2/ Speed mode, same conditions but without undervolting the CPU.
3/ Speed mode, same conditions but aero enabled.
4/ Speed mode, same conditions but screen full brightness.

By the way, I am also interested to know if you have played with the power management included in Vista?

Thanks again for the wonderful work!!

 

Well I have nothing do to until September 1st so I will gladly perform these conditions for you. I'll start on them right now.

And thank you to everyone for all the positive feedback. It's greatly appreciated.

 

New results for anyone whose interested!

 

Thanks again for the good work!
So it seems you can save 45 minutes by setting the brightness of the screen all the way down...Interesting.
I'll keep watching this thread and look forward your next updates.

Any comment on the power management included in Vista? Does it work on the SZ?

Cheers

 

Right now I'm in the middle of Speed mode on stock clocks.

As for the management in Vista. I don't use it. I don't even know where it is to me honest with you. I use NHC and set the system to Maximum Battery.

I'll update as soon as my battery hits 5%.

Update: The new run will have to wait because my Hard Drive is thrashing for some reason and it's killing my battery life. The results I post wouldn't be accurate. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update 2: Heh... it wasn't Vista... it was my automatic virus scan. I'm just gonna charge the battery and run it down again. I caught on to everyones habit here of automatically blaming Vista!

 

New results posted with Speed mode at stock speeds!

 

Very interesting results!
Really appreciated!

I'll keep watching this thread...

 

why are you downclocking the GPU? It does this automatically when it's not needed, down to 168GPU 100mem

Very interesting tip on the sidebar (I agree, useless program)

How long does it take you to recharge? Mine takes 6 hours which I think is defective.

 

My GPU doesn't automatically downclock... It stays at it's stock speeds when on battery. The SZ440 doesn't use Nvidias powermizer, I dunno about other models.

To recharge from 5% to 100% it takes around 3-4 hours. I'm not sure why. Maybe it has to do with the 3 cell battery have so much capacity? I'm honestly not sure but it's the reason I can't do more than 1 test a day! =P

 

Excellent work Sprintguy! That's very interesting about the windows sidebar. I would never have guessed that it ate up that much battery. Duely repped.

How about a test where you just run movies? For instance, can you burn through 2 feature lengthed movies in whatever mode is best for power saving?

 

Yeah, I'll definitely give it a shot. I'm just a bit busy lately. Packing for college, paperwork... the works. But I'll just let the movies play while I do something else. I'll update with the results in the next few days.

 

Sweet, you rock!

 

i dont want to make a new thread, so i post my "silly" question here..

For a long time Im using stamina mode, SZ320 and Vista HP, today a tried speed mode and i cant beleive what a difference.. laptop is at least twice faster. Everything is opened so fast, Im not talking about apps, just working with Vista. The cpu speed is controlled with NHC and profile is the same as in stamina mode..

Is this speed increase caused only because of nVidia graphics?

 

Yeah, Vista is a snappier on Speed Mode. Definitely. The nVidia card has dedicated graphics memory... well it's a dedicated card end of story. Vista performs much better with the dedicated cards since they're more powerful. Vista eats up graphics memory and the dedicated graphics memory on the card itself really helps. This all comes at a price though. More heat and less battery life.