17.3" DEFIANCE V RTX Battery performance

[MarcoD]

Hi,

I started to used the laptop yesterday (2080 max-q), that is the battery performance:

16:25:25	Active	Battery	97 %	58.429 mWh
17:25:31	Suspended		27 %	16.553 mWh
17:51:18	Active	AC	4 %	2.341 mWh

About 80 minutes, with maximum power saving profile in control center 3 and windows 10, intel graphics, and only chrome active. It is not so much.. any idea?

M

 

[phitol]

hsre Are a few tips,

1. Use power saving, or quiet modes in CCC (use fn + 3 as a shortcut to change modes)
2. Right click the battery systray icon and make sure it isn’t all the way to the right, either have that in the middle or on the left, the right performance option never lets the clock speed drop down.
3. Monitor cpu usage, and use how info or similar to see what your cpu, gpu and system power values are, there can be some processes that just use lots of cpu time for no reason.

I get around 3 hours of run time in power saver with the windows battery icon setting in the middle. Note that I thin quiet mode is actually configured to,use the least power from looking at the profiles affect on power limits and clocks, but I haven’t proven that in translates to longer run time on battery

 

[ubuysa]

Right click the battery systray icon and make sure it isn’t all the way to the right, either have that in the middle or on the left, the right performance option never lets the clock speed drop down.

I didn't know that! This sounds like a bug, or is it a feature? If it's a bug do you know if it's been reported to Microsoft? If it's a feature, do you know where it's documented?

You learn something new every day one here.....

 

[MarcoD]

Same.. about 70-80 minutes, with nothing active. there is anything i can do? some test to check? the battery seems not broken, the capacity is good.

 

[phitol]

So, lets do controlled test

1. Set the CCC Mode to 'Power Saving'
2. Ensure the systray battery icon when right clicked is all the way to the left (only when on battery)

Now, use "HWInfo" - freely downloadable from the internet to monitor the following (graph these by double clicking each one in the big 'sensors' list.
CPU Core 0 Usage
CPU Core 1 Usage
CPU Core 2 Usage
CPU Core 3 Usage
CPU Core 4 Usage
CPU Core 5 Usage

CPU Clock 0
CPU Clock 1
CPU Clock 2
CPU Clock 3
CPU Clock 4
CPU Clock 5

CPU Package Power

That should do to start with.
Close all apps so you only have the desktop.

The idea would be to graph those for 10 minutes when on battery to see what the CPU Usage/Clocks and how much power the CPU is reporting as using, ideally clocks should be down in the 800Mhz range most of the time, and CPU Usage very close to zero with around 1-2W of package power on average.
HW Info will report min/max and average for the items numerically on top of the graphs.

We could then go from there.

 

[MarcoD]

Hi,

Done the test, cpu always 6-8%, only hwmonitor.exe active.

2019-08-19 17:43:23	Active	Battery	98 %	58.338 mWh
19:23:32	Report generated	Battery	13 %	8.010 mWh

Is the battery?
MD

 

[phitol]

What was the cpu package power average ? That can help check if your cpu is not fully going into a low power state
And is your screen set to maximum brightness? I have brightness on 1/3 usually as the backlight takes a lot of power.
Is the desktop refresh rate 144hz? Lowering this to 60hz might extend battery life.

The time above is 1h40m with 8 Wh left, so would nearly get just under 2 hours, so it’s a bit low but some other factors might be at play. 2.5 hours for a 60wh battery should be achievable

 

[phitol]

Just thought I'd update this after doing some checking on my Defiance V 16.1", trying to maximise battery life for surfing. Currently I get 2h50mins or so with settings 1/2/3 below, then undervolted and turbo disabled.

(Windows 10)
1.CCC in Quiet Mode
2. Windows Battery Setting on the second option from the left
3. Screen on 20% brightness (Plenty for surfing the web in the front room)
4. Under volted using Throttle Stop (-250mV CPU, -125mV CPU Cache and iGPU) and to disable 'turbo'
5. RGB Keyboard switched off

Just letting this run for 30 mins or so, using HW Info running for 2 mins to get some averages:

Spoiler: HW Info screens - Normal usage

Essentially the CPU is set to lower power limits, no turbo etc, and it's sipping power.

If just sat on the desktop running HW Info (which uses a bit of power):

Spoiler: HWInfo - Desktop + HWInfo

Average CPU usage of 2% is great, and with an average clock of 1ghz that should give around 4-5 hours of usage. In the OP, 6-8% was reported, that definitely does suggest other processes are running.

I think using the above settings getting over 3 hours is easy, and that's using the laptop to view a few video's, surf the web, etc. Doing nothing, 4 hours is easily achievable, maybe more as I've not had a chance to get hte battery to learn its full capacity yet (windows shows loads of energy left in the battery despite the battery % value being low).