Trying to Increase Battery Life

[murphyslabrat]

My question is if you can artificially disable shaders on a GPU, like effectively running an 8800m GTS as an 8400. A follow up question is whether this would result in power savings great enough to warrant the work/risk involved. I have no idea how much of either is involved, as I am now asking the how-to.

 

[mpilchfamily]

If you want to disable parts of the GPU then don't run games. If the video card doesn't have to render 3D graphics then it doesn't need to use the shaders. When running basic windows apllications the 3D side of the card isn't used thus saving power. You can also just dumb down all the features in games so that the card isn't being heavly loaded.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: murphyslabrat
My question is if you can artificially disable shaders on a GPU, like effectively running an 8800m GTS as an 8400. A follow up question is whether this would result in power savings great enough to warrant the work/risk involved. I have no idea how much of either is involved, as I am now asking the how-to.

The best option is to lower the memory and core speed.

 

[murphyslabrat]

I am querying here, not arguing: If the shaders are not used, then how come different graphics cards in the same family don't have the same idle power draw?

and two co-relating questions, how much would I have to underclock to get how much of a battery life boost?

For informational sake, I have a 1.66 Ghz Gateway P-6831fx, everything stock.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: murphyslabrat
I am querying here, not arguing: If the shaders are not used, then how come different graphics cards in the same family don't have the same idle power draw?

Different amounts of VRAM at different speeds with different vDimm, and different core speeds.

and two co-relating questions, how much would I have to underclock to get how much of a battery life boost?

While I don't know the answer to your question, I do happen to know that it's only one question.

 

[L00PY]

I suspect you'd see a larger battery life increase just dropping the brightness down one notch than you'd see with any amount of manual underclocking and tweaking of the GPU.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: L00PY
I suspect you'd see a larger battery life increase just dropping the brightness down one notch than you'd see with any amount of manual underclocking and tweaking of the GPU.

Exactly. Underclocking the videocard doesn't reduce power consumption to a point that it matters, if you don't decrease, somehow, the voltage to both ram and GPU. But that is not possible.

 

[murphyslabrat]

Originally posted by: L00PY
I suspect you'd see a larger battery life increase just dropping the brightness down one notch than you'd see with any amount of manual underclocking and tweaking of the GPU.

I already typically have my screen at the lowest brightness setting, and still only get about 3 hours of battery life. So, I wanted to know if there was a way I could cut the draw of the other critical power-drain: the GPU.

 

[Stoneburner]

discrete GPU laptops can't get very good battery life period. Unless you have one of those hybrid systems that allows you to switch between integrated and discrete graphics.