Bad performance on battery

[pafkata90]

I've got a laptop Dell Vostro 1700 and I've been experiencing problems with the performance on battery even when I'm on "high performance" power plan. I told this to a few guys at one computer shop and they took a look at it and told me that I should disable the Intel Dynamic Acceleration and SpeedStep from the BIOS and it should perform as good as when it's plugged in. It's just that my battery should run out faster this way. So I did that and actually it does work just as good as it is when charging. I've made just a few quick tests playing FullHD flash video and one game (both of which actions had low fps on battery before). But what's confusing me is that according to Everest my processor is now running at 1200 MHz. It is core2duo T9300 and it should be 2500. But if I enable the SpeedStep from the BIOS menu I experience low fps while running the same game.
Can you give me some idea what are the pros and the cons by enabling/disabling these two and advice me what shall I set them to be - enabled or disabled. It's not about the gaming-that was just for the test. Normally I don't use it for gaming that much (just for the holidays the last month ). I wanna be able to use its full power on battery using some of the programs I work on at the university - mainly Revit Architecture and AutoCAD, cause when I load a big project and rotate a bit some times it's a pain in the ...

 

[zigzag3143]

I've got a laptop Dell Vostro 1700 and I've been experiencing problems with the performance on battery even when I'm on "high performance" power plan. I told this to a few guys at one computer shop and they took a look at it and told me that I should disable the Intel Dynamic Acceleration and SpeedStep from the BIOS and it should perform as good as when it's plugged in. It's just that my battery should run out faster this way. So I did that and actually it does work just as good as it is when charging. I've made just a few quick tests playing FullHD flash video and one game (both of which actions had low fps on battery before). But what's confusing me is that according to Everest my processor is now running at 1200 MHz. It is core2duo T9300 and it should be 2500. But if I enable the SpeedStep from the BIOS menu I experience low fps while running the same game.
Can you give me some idea what are the pros and the cons by enabling/disabling these two and advice me what shall I set them to be - enabled or disabled. It's not about the gaming-that was just for the test. Normally I don't use it for gaming that much (just for the holidays the last month ). I wanna be able to use its full power on battery using some of the programs I work on at the university - mainly Revit Architecture and AutoCAD, cause when I load a big project and rotate a bit some times it's a pain in the ...

Full power? Max computing?

Can we get some specifics about your system and power plan set up?

I am confused because the thread is "bad performance on battery". Bad computational performance, or bad battery life?

 

[Petey7]

Good news, I have the same computer and have played with the settings you speak of. Now for the bad news. When speed step is disabled, the CPU runs at the minimum processor state. In other words, with speed step it will slow things down below 2.5GHz when the computer gets hot or isn't doing much. When it is disabled on a Dell computer, it runs at 1.2GHz all the time, and performance during certain tasks will suffer accordingly (and the WEI score will drop like a rock). Your battery will actually take longer to run out this way.

It would definitely be good to see exactly how your power plan is set up.

 

[Petey7]

Something else just occurred to me. Where did you get most of your drivers from? Dell doesn't supply a good deal of 7 x64 compatible ones on their drivers page for the Vostro 1700. I know some of them don't work quite right and most, if not all, are outdated.

 

[pafkata90]

zigzag3143 I'm talking about how smooth the programs run, not the battery life. I don't care that much about the battery life.
The "high performance" power plan is set as follows:
The settings are the same for battery and plugged in

PCI Express
Link State Power Management Off
Processor power management
Minimum processor state 100%
System cooling policy Active
Maximum processor state 100%
Multimedia settings
When sharing media Prevent idling to sleep
When playing video Optimize video quality

I think those that I skipped are not important.
I'm wondering why when it's plugged in it can perform better than on battery. Shouldn't it be the same if the plan settings are the same for plugged in and on battery? Could it be some kind of hardware limitation? And also you didn't say anything about the Intel Dynamic Acceleration.
Thanks for your responses

PS: I think I used the once that Windows suggest me for most of the hardware. And I took one from Dell website for the 1720 model for Win7 x64 (I think it was just for the touch pad). The video driver - from nVidia website, and I think there was something more like the SDcard slot that I had to find and install manually. Yeah.. and the bluetooth. I think that's all.

 

[Petey7]

What BIOS revision do you have? It should be in the form of A0X, X being any number between 0 and 7. It will show it when you first turn the computer on.

 

[pafkata90]

It's the latest one - A07.

 

[Petey7]

Its been a while since I messed with Dynamic Acceleration. All I can remember is I decided I like it on.

I would try getting the latest video card driver form NVIDIA (not Dell). And get the Ricoh chipset driver from here. The one from Dell is older and doesn't work very well.

 

[pafkata90]

Thanks. I've done the same

 

[Petey7]

I've gotta say, you issues with your computer are bugging the mess out of me. I've finally gotten mine working like a dream, but I've never had a major issue when switching between being plugged in and on battery power. I've had to get creative to find all the right drivers, but getting the newest ones, even for an seemingly insignificant part, definitely boosted performance for me.

 

[pafkata90]

OK. Can someone explain me what exactly speedstep does? As far as I understand it - when it's enabled it changes the frequency and the voltage of the processor depending on how busy it is (couldn't find better word in English ), and when it's disabled it puts the processor to 1200 MHz frequency and doesn't change it. But apparently I'm missing something because I get better performance on my test game when it's off rather than when it's on. I'm talking about battery playing. When it's on charger I can't see any difference.

 

[Petey7]

I can't come up with an explanation of why the game would work better with it turned off when on battery power. Here is an article about what exactly speed step is: SpeedStep - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think something you should try is changing the minimum processor state to 5 or 10% (default under other power plans). You might see a difference.

 

[pafkata90]

No difference in changing it. I've tried. Thanks for the article link
I'm waiting for other opinions so guys - feel free to help

 

[pafkata90]

Anyone else?