help with POWER OPTIONS

[ShannonRyu]

I'm not sure if this is in the correct forum, but I'll give it a shot...

My 6 month old laptop battery lasts under 1 hour when unplugged. It is usually plugged in as I only use in in my living room as part of my wireless network. I was trying to tweak the POWER OPTIONS to maximize battery performance and most of the options make no sense to me. I hope someone can let me know how to adjust my advanced power options to get better battery life.

Specifically:

• What is PCI Express Link state power mgmt.?
• What is USB selective suspend?
• What is the difference between sleep, hybrid sleep and hibernate?
• What is minimum and maximum processor state?

 

[KSoD]

My guess would be that you didnt cycle the battery when you got it. Meaning you didnt charge it full then use it till it died at least 3 times to give the battery optimal performance.

PCIe Link State is for PCIe devices. Most laptops dont have them.
USB Selective suspend is just that. You can selectively suspend power to certain USB devices.
Sleep is the most power consuming mode. IT basically just puts your computer in standby mode with the display turned off. Any touch to it will wake it up ready for action.
Hybrid sleep is something new to me. I will have to research it.
Hibernate is where you would have to use the power button to restore the laptop to working order. It is the most power efficent. It saves yur desktop to RAM and nothing else is being used.
Mix and MaxProcessor state is what it sounds like. The Minimum and Maximum state for the CPU. Meaning useing ti at 100% or less at a given time. I think...

Moved to Laptop area.

 

[ShannonRyu]

Got it. I did cycle my battery when I got it.

What should I set my min and max processor power to? I do not understand what the percentages stand for pertaing to minimum and maximum processor power.

 

[KSoD]

Give a screenshot.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

The minimum and maximum CPU thing usually refers to CPU Clock Scaling. Your CPU runs at a certain frequency (for example, my Core 2 Duo T9300 runs at 2.5GHz). However, 2.5GHz is pretty fast, and if you're not gaming or doing other intensive tasks, much of that processing power is wasted. CPU clock scaling is a feature of mobile CPU's that allows the chip to run at a lower frequency when you aren't running intensive applications. Usually your system will automatically lower the frequency when applications aren't using much processing power. However, when you open a new application or need a quick boost of power, it will scale the CPU back up to full power. With battery settings, you can cap (usually by percentage) the limit that your CPU will run. This way, your CPU will never run at full speed and won't use up a lot of power doing so. The downside is that you're limited in power, as your processor is now running slower (usually around 800MHz to 1000MHz) so your programs may not load or run quite as fast. 800MHz on a dual-core processor is plenty fast enough to run web browsing, media playback, and office applications so you probably won't need that extra power when you're on the go. I recommend using the CPU scaling feature as it saves a lot of battery (I use it on my laptop when I unplug it).

 

[KurrentEweser]

There should be an option to adjust the display brightness. Power can be saved by lowering the display brightness and setting the screen saver to power off the display after a few minutes of inactivity.

 

[ShannonRyu]

This is what I have:

and this is what I don't understand:

I pretty much use my laptop for just what you said, 90% web browsing and 10% media and Office.

Thank you all for your help.

 

[KurrentEweser]

Set the Maximum Processor State On Battery to as low as you can tolerate. That should give you a little more battery life.

 

[ShannonRyu]

cool, but then what is minimum for?

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Minimum is the lowest your CPU will go. Usually you can't entirely control it (aka set it to below usually 800MHz) but if that's too slow for you, then you can set the minimum so it will never go below a certain speed. I'd leave minimum alone and set maximum lower only for "On battery" (as it has unlimited power when plugged in so it can run better).