Dell Precision M3800 - 2013!

Actually no. In fact, Intel would much rather utilize cores to enhance your computing needs than clock speed. They made that claims years ago.

However, applications are another story. They don't seem interested. And no wonder, the cost and complexity to software manufacturer is staggering. That's why they're reluctant to redesign their software.

Just look at the cold reception Apple got when they moved to 64 bit and changed the interface from their most popular FCP 7. Other manufactures don't want to leave their loyal supporters behind.

Avid finally made the switch a few months ago, and the gaming community doesn't seem to be in too big a hurry in their department either. Those brave few that have, can move rapidly forward and can utilize as many cores as you can throw at it.

That would be a big improvement. But it has to be feasible.

 

It seems that there usually is someone in the conference room who asks "does anyone have adapter to this projector?", and there usually is at least one well-prepared Apple user with mDP-VGA or Thunderbolt-VGA dongle. But tough luck if your laptop only has HDMI (or, mini HDMI)....I wish if they bother purchasing dongles to go with these old VGA projectors, though, since I don't think they will be retiring anytime soon.

About mobile CPUs, I think I'd prefer quad-core ULV, with each core having the base performance of 2ghz Haswell, I don't need 6 cores for my laptop, but I can use quad-core power for number-crunching as long as it doesn't eat away too much of battery life (as current-gen quad-cores tend to do).

 

The current-gen 37/47/57 watt quads are probably using less power than the RAM in the system at idle. The difference between them, ULV, and dual cores is the amount of power they will pull at full load. The 4930MX pulls less than a watt at idle.

 

^ In theory, yes. In practice, that is not what we are seeing with all these Windows-based quad-core laptops with subpar battery life, even with use cases where these laptops are mostly at idle. I suspect that it is the issue with Windows which laptop makers have very little control over -- It is likely that Windows sends the system to full load far longer than it should.

 

So you need to do number crunching while on battery... each with his own peculiarities i guess. You can always transform your 37W quad in a 17W ULV. Install Intel XTU, set desired maximum multiplier to 20x, undervolt if you wish, and then crunch away... on battery.

At 2000Mhz and 0.78V a mobile Haswell quad will have a CPU Package Power of around 18W under full load.
Undervolted to 0.68V, the same CPU operating at 2000Mhz will drop to 14W.

Don't tell me it's still too much power under load, even us humans need some candy when thinking hard.

 

Excuse me, but I think you misunderstood my comment. I want to be able to do number-crunching when I am plugged, while having good battery life on go for the less intensive tasks, which is something the current quad-core Haswell/IB are incapable of doing (unless it is Apple). As I said, this seems to be caused because Windows send CPUs out of idle far more often than necessary, so that modern quad-core mobile CPUs cannot take advantage of its low idle power consumption (idle power consumption of ULV and normal Haswells are very similar, yet they have staggering difference in battery life even for light tasks like web surfing) . If quad-core CPUs are LV, at least they won't spend as much power when they are not idling. After Haswell, I hope.

(Or, MS can improve Windows to be more battery-freindly, of course.)

 

I'm pretty sure Windows has a very vigorous power management system. Are we misunderstanding you again?

 

Actually, a laptop has a ton of other controllers and chips where the firmware can be subpar as far as power consumption is concerned. Intel was actually pretty peeved about this at some point because it ruined the battery life on some notebooks. Add to that over aggressive fan profiles, the M6700 gets very good battery life on battery in part because the fans almost never spin up. Apple has optimized power consumption across the board on their notebooks, they didn't just take advantage of the power savings afforded by new CPUs. Apple is also conservative on the fans spinning, to a fault actually, but under light load, it helps with battery life at lower loads.

 

And I think you misunderstood what ULV chips are and what Windows does to ensure both battery life and performance. Let's go over these topics one by one.

On the Intel - Hardware side, to the best of my knowledge, ever since Sandy Bridge, there are three main differences between ULV and LV chips:
1. Base operating frequencies are lower for ULV processors, while turbo boost difference is smaller.
2. Operating voltage as a given frequency is generally lower for more expensive ULV units.
3. Maximum TDP is lower and enforced at chip level by limiting boost frequencies as necessary. For example a Haswell ULV chip will only exceed it's maximum 15W power limit for a limited number of seconds, after which it will seek to limit either CPU frequency, GPU frequency or both in order to reach a 15W power usage. There are other details concerning configurable TDP, but they bring little difference to this discussion.

Now, except for the TDP limits which cannot be configured on standard mobile quads, Intel provides you with the means to influence both operating frequency and voltage using XTU. Some extreme quad cores should allow TDP configuration though. As I have mentioned in my last post, you can take one 4700HQ Haswell with a TDP of 47W and force it to use only 14W under CPU load by limiting maximum frequency to 2000Mhz and using a dynamic undervolt of 100mV. Not all chips may undervolt by 100mV, but you can get close to that figure anyway.

All that being said, one can end up with a mobile quad core processor which consumes less than 1W in idle mode, and less than 15W under CPU load no matter what the Operating System says or does. ULV behavior from a LV chip by moving a few sliders.

On the Windows - Software side, things have improved considerably to the point where using a certain power plan (Power Saver, Balanced, High Performance) has a clear impact on both performance and battery life. Things such as maximum operating frequency, minimum frequency, CPU load threshold for frequency switch (both up and down) are separately configured in each profile. If you take a look at the picture bellow, you'll notice a series of parameters not usually available for users. They can be exposed using registry keys, they are not the only ones, and they show Microsoft has properly addressed power management. I exposed them out of curiosity and did not "tweak" them since they were clearly configured for every profile.



Too many big words and no hard facts? Well, let's see facts.
XPS 12 / 2013 Haswell / 50Wh battery - 15 Hours idle / 9 Hours surfing on battery.
Mac Air 13 / 2013 Haswell / 50Wh battery - 13.5 Hours idle / 10.3 Hours surfing on battery.

Seems to me Windows 8 plays the battery life game just fine, even with a IPS 1080p panel versus a TN 900p one.

So let's do a short recap: in the first part of this post I showed how you can make a quadcore Haswell behave like ULV chip, while in the second part I took a short look at current Windows power management and also showed Windows and OSx have similar battery life on properly configured platforms. Nowadays, with less than 1W power consumption in idle from the processor, the rest of the platform has a tremendous effect on battery life. Simply using two standard memory DIMMs instead of soldered LPDDR3 memory might add almost 1W to idle power usage and limit low usage battery life by 20% for example. Interesting, isn't it?

Want great battery life from a portable 15" quad core Windows machine? Choose a well built machine, with a battery to match the form factor, and configure it to your hearts desire, you might be surprised by the results.

The Precision M3800 or the XPS 15 might just be some of those machines, or at least they seem to check all the right marks in that direction. Reviews will tell.

 

You should be getting good battery life. I had an Alienware M18xR2 previously with a Quad-Core Ivy Bridge processor and dual AMD 7970M graphics cards. Under light load, I was able to get 4+ hours of battery life. When I put a heavy load on the CPU I got about 2 hours of battery life (heavy load on cpu).

ULV processors aren't too different. For this example I will use my MacBook Air (2013) model. Apple says you're able to get 12 hours of battery life. I get about 8 hours on a light load, however when I put a heavy load on this processor, that number drops to as low as 3-4 hours max.

Windows isn't too bad with battery management. I think Windows 8 does a good job with battery life. When running Windows 8 (natively {boot camp}) I get around 4-5 hours, but at the same time I do put more stress on the cpu in windows due to the applications I use. If I used it lightly like on Mac OS X, I'd probably get the same battery life.