Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge, Part 2

Thanks for your reply. The main reasons for me to buy e6400 is its excellent wxga+ LG LED, 25w P series CPU, Display port, Great battery life, E-Port (When I want to code), Durability, Performance... I think only business class notebooks can have all these features. I mentioned two or three hours of web surfing just to find out how this notebook can handle heat with Nvidia card under minimum amount of processing load. Thanks again for your attention.

 

Ah yes, your like me then. Yes this laptop is perfect for sure task, and even more. It's been 1 year I use it and I love it. And I don't regret the Nvidia solution.. and I ended up using this GPU. The only downside form this GPU over the Intel one, is that you lose about 30min of battery life... (comparing with a 5400RPM HDD, based on people comment and not a direct comparison).

 

What if I watch a video clip (1080p) for about 30 minutes, Does the notebook get warm? Thanks.

 

It depends...
What video player will you use? under Windows 32-bit or 64-bit? Is the player 32-bit or 64-bit? Encoding of the video, it's format, and the video player uses GPU or CPU to render the video. In addition, What CPU model you take as well (faster the more heat it produces)?


So a lot of factors comes into play.

Playing HD videos is demanding. To show that the above all plays a role. If you play a standard Flash video on youtube for instance.. Flash doesn't use the GPU to render the video, but instead of the CPU, this result in high utilization of the north-bridge processors and CPU, which translate in having the fan kick in at full speed within a few minutes of playing. The GPU plays no role into this, so weather you have the Intel or Nvidia solution the result is the same. A new Flash version is in developement which will support GPU rendering, thanks to Nvidia pushing the hell out of Adobe to make this happen.. so that will help.


I will however test the following for you:
1- Disable Nvidia GPU power management so that it stays at full speed.
2- Set the laptop under Balance
3- Have the laptop on a wooden table (not those particle board with plastic), to amplify the heat issue
4- use Windows 7 64-bit
5- use Windows Media Player 12 64-bit with Shark007 64-bit codec pack.
6- Attached via Display port to a 24inch display 1920x1200
7- Room temperature is one that would prefer A/C, but don't have one, but not hot either. I call it.. comfy-warm room. I don't have a thermometer to know what's the temperature of my room.

So yea, I am pushing quiet high.

Give me 30min, and I'll post you hows my result and temps.

 

Ok, well it was like cutting warm butter for the GPU.

Before playing the 1080p HD movie for 30min.
- Laptop GPU power management turned off (so it was going full speed all the time).
- Laptop set to balance mode and running for over 2 hours.
- Wieless on.
- Fan not spinning

At that stage, the palm rest is about room temperature, however right side of the palm rest was a little warmer (light warm) due to the wireless card, and contact-less card reader.

After playing the video for 30min, the fan accelerated a bit, but still medium quiet (it's mostly the air passing through that makes the sound and not the fan motor.. so it's a soft woosh type of sound that is not annoying and doesn't interfere with the movie).

Here are the before and after temperature attached:

Before:


After:


Hope this helps.

 

Many, many thanks for your thorough investigation. That was late in Australia and I was asleep. I couldn't thank you sooner.

 

hi goodbytes, is there any possibilty to set the nvidia GPU to switch its clocks faster? the only option I've found so far is turning off powermizer. this would solve the problem of lagging window-transitions but that would increase power consumption at the same time. is there something between these two options?

 

If you use my tool I made, Nv GPU Pro, what you can do is set a mode where the PowerMizer is enabled on battery (save battery life), but when you are plug-in it's disabled (GPU goes full speed).

Else than that, you can use Nvidia System Tool, to give you the ability to overclock, or downclock your GPU. And use overclock profiles to switch between speeds as requested. I have a guide on my signature on how to make that (it's very easy.. unless sldiing bar and clicking on a Save As button is complicated). Basically, what you can do is create 3 profiles Minimum, medium and default. Where you pick the speed profile of what you look. Faster your GPU, the more power it will consume.

Other than that, there is not much you can do. Let's assume graphic card memory can be upgraded. The current one is 64-bit memory type. To get a smoother interface, you need to do either: Double the memory type to 128-bit, or double it's speed from the lowest speed (100MHz in this case). In either case, it will consume twice the power for the memory of the GPU. So upgrading the GPU (if it was possible, like on desktop), would be the same problem, or even worse, as it will consume even more power as every component is faster, and this applied to any GPU brand and type you can get on a laptop. However, some GPU's, what they do, is because they are more much slower, they can afford 128-bit or faster memory.

The only way to fix this is a new GPU architecture, or a new battery material that provide so much more battery life, that you still have the same level of battery life, by having the GPU running at full speed.

 

thank u for the detailed answer goodbytes ,
creating profiles according to usage sounds really interessting. I would like to create one with the minimum clocks nessacary to have smooth aero effects on Win 7 (e.g minimzing, moving, thumbnailing windows). Do u know which clocks would be good for this purpose?

PS: as many people have pointed out, many many thx for u effort on this forum, really

 

Sadly no, you will have to experiment.

Ah well, it's all fun stuff for me.