vPro Haswell processors and Connected Standby

[JustMe21]

I was reading about Haswell processors with vPro not supporting Connected Standby. Looking at the Intel Ark, the features seem to be the same as non vPro processors, other than vPro. I've also read that Connected Standby isn't available when using Hyper-V, so my question is if you disable all the virtualization technology in the BIOS (provided the option is there), will Connected Standby work?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2973536

 

[VirtualLarry]

Are you asking about Desktop, or Mobile? I wasn't aware that "connected standby" worked for desktop.

 

[JustMe21]

It's the mobile processors. Later versions of the Surface Pro 2 had the i5-4300U and Dell has the Venue 11 Pro 7130 with the i5-4300Y processors. Both feature the vPro technology, although earlier versions of the Surface Pro 2 and other versions of the Core Venue 11 Pros had processors without vPro. I've read that Dell support said that vPro processors didn't support Connected Standby and even Surface Pro 2 users reported that Connected Standby didn't work properly either due to poor battery life.

The Microsoft KB seems to suggest that with all the virtualization technology turned on, that Connected Standby isn't available, but that doesn't state that it doesn't exist on those processors.

Perhaps neither Microsoft nor Dell put in the proper components for Connected Standby to work properly even if the processor supported the sleep state for Connected Standby, but I still wonder if the state exists within the processor and would it possibly work again if all the virtualization settings were disabled in the BIOS.

 

[JustMe21]

Anand's article talks about both Desktop and Mobile processors and discusses new sleep states, but doesn't mention if it was specific to mobile processors only.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/3

In the end, perhaps the poor battery life in Connected Standby is not just hardware, but software. It would be nice to see Connected Standby/InstantGo performance in reviews, so companies work to make sure their hardware and software works with the sleep states and so others don't think their hardware is defective.