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go6800 can't switch to Max Perf in Battery mode


mobilenvidia

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Hi,

there is an problem with my XPS Gen2 notebook (Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 Ultra) in battery-mode. It's not possible to switch the powermizer option to maximum performance. The available options are "battery optimized? and ?balanced? - no max performance. Any idea? In battery-mode the GPU downclocks automatically... Did you know a fix for this problem?

Regards Stefan from Germy

Sorry for the bad English...

Stefan,

Ahhh, I wondered how Dell were going to work this.

The XPS2 needs 130w of power to run at full speed.

When in battery mode the power needed by the laptop will be too great for the battery to output.

So to fix this the go6800 Ultra can only be run in lower power modes when on battery power.

So in lower power mode the battery can handle the power needed as it's running at a lower speed and probably lower voltage.

Very sneaky from Dell and probably the reason why Powermizer isn't working in the latest 76.xx drivers while nVidia fix this.

Try an older driver, any driver that has support for the go6800 (any driver with an INF 30.64 and higher ie71.36)

The older driver may not have the Powermizer bug (unless it's in the BIOS)

Hope this helps.

I'll put this in the forum for others to see and comment, will be very interesting.

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Good answer, Pieter. However, I'd caution against trying to use max performane in battery mode even if PowerMizer appears to support it. As you noted, the power requirement is more than the battery can supply and the battery will overheat, ...perhaps dangerously so.

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Guest ghd_2858

I'm not sure about the "information" 130W.... It's the dimension of the power supply, but the power supply can parallel charge the battery and supply the work of the notebook...

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Battery:  9 cell (80WHr) "smart" lithium ion

AC Adapter:  Input voltage: 90 to 265 VAC

Input current (maximum): 2.5A at 90 VAC, full load

Output current: 6.7A

Output power: 130W standard

Dimensions (H x W x D): 1.47 inch (38mm) x 2.6 inch (65mm) x 6.7 inch (170mm)

Weight (with cables): 0.9 lbs. (950 g)

The specs from Dell on their battery for the XPS2

Keep in mind that the go6800Ultra alone takes 68w at full speed, that leaves 12w for the rest of the machine.

There you have it, there is no way to run at full speed with the Battery as the power source, Maybe if they allow for 2nd battery to work in parrallel with the primary.

I hope this explains it.

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Guest Guest

I checked the power consumption of the notebook and here are the results...

Idle modus@800MHz: 45W

Idle modus@2.13GHz: 46W

under load (CPU) @2.13GHz: 65W

under load (3DMark2005) Powermizer @balanced performance (250/658MHz): 65W

under load (3DMark2005) Powermizer @max performance (450/1064MHz: 93W

effect display intensity - min to max: 4W

effect led?s - on/off: 0W

According to this informations the 6800 ultra could run at max-power in battery-mode. The definition of WHr is: Electrical power measured in terms of time. One watt hour of electricity is equal to one watt of power being consumed for one hour. (A one-watt light operated for one hour would consume one watt hour of electricity.)

Regards Stefan

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3Dmark is only exercising your graphics card. When you add significant amount of CPU, hard drive, and CD/DVD to that, as you would when gaming, you would be running in the red zone. You've undoubtably read news items about laptop (I think both Sony and Apple) batteries catching fire? This is exactly what Dell is trying to prevent.

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I checked the power consumption of the notebook and here are the results...

Idle modus@800MHz: 45W

Idle modus@2.13GHz: 46W

under load (CPU) @2.13GHz: 65W

under load (3DMark2005) Powermizer @balanced performance (250/658MHz): 65W

under load (3DMark2005) Powermizer @max performance (450/1064MHz: 93W

effect display intensity - min to max: 4W

effect led?s - on/off: 0W

According to this informations the 6800 ultra could run at max-power in battery-mode. The definition of WHr is: Electrical power measured in terms of time. One watt hour of electricity is equal to one watt of power being consumed for one hour. (A one-watt light operated for one hour would consume one watt hour of electricity.)

Regards Stefan

The Ultra needs 93w to run, the battery is rated to 80w for 1 hour (when brand new) this will drop the instant you use it.

How long is it rated for @ 93w ?

The power required is still too big, the battery will heat up, there are more things involved here.

The battery might cook it's self and place a huge strain on the charger to charge the battery and run the laptop.

Anyway moral of story is, you can't run @ full speed on the battery.

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With that battery and one of those new designed laptops running that GF6800 ultra at max speed he could cook a grilled cheese sandwitch it would seem....

lol :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest seanryan

Just brought a dell XPS gen 2 and bit pissed to find you cannot run it full speed on a battery. Had similar issues on an amd 64 - but this an issue with powernow steppping bac, which was not supposed to run full on battery - but it did.

Is there anyway around this on the dell 6800 or do you risk overheat and battery trashing?

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I think the previous posts in this thread pretty well cover the issue. But the short version is that, yes, you likely would overheat your battery if you tried to run in max performance mode.

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The battery can't supply enough power for long enough, the go6800 Ultra needs 68w @ full speed, the battery is rated @84Whr so 84w for 1 hour, the laptop would need about 100-120w to run everything at full speed, the drain will heat the battery and a LiON Batteries worst enemy is heat.

You would loose the ability to charge it again to full capacity very quickly.

It's a very sensible safety feature, unless you can afford to get batteries as throw away after one use.

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