M4800 Owner's Thread

M4800 price discrepancy between AU and US.

I priced up the same specification laptop in both the AU and US store and after currency conversion the US version was almost half the price of the AU version.

Any thoughts on why this might be?

Thanks.

 

Because of the price difference I might try buying straight from ODM.
Does anyone know who the ODM is for the M4800?

Thanks.

 

My battery life is pretty good on the FHD. Optimus helps tons, I can routinely go 6 hours+ with light work, web browsing, video watching, etc. It's only if I start cranking on 3D that I can get full discharge time down under 4 hours.

 

Yeah the lack of Optimus on the QHD version is basically my only major complaint with this machine.

 

And to address the question inside the question, no, the base config of the M4800 is very good, with very good power saving defaults. The MXM being forced on at all times by the QHD screen is what breaks the system. When my M4800 is idle, with the screen backlight turned down, the wattage being used is comparable to my 13" ultrabook. It's only when I use it that wattage jumps up, and that's because the system is busy working. I would strongly advise *against* tampering with the stock voltages and idle/turbo settings, Intel has those pretty tightly calibrated, and idle current use by the CPU is already extremely low. In my case, a fully idle M4800 draws 8 watts. If I turn the backlight coompletely off, the machine drops to about 4 watts. Backlight on, at 100% brightness, 40 watts. Run the CPU hard on eight threads, 115 watts. As soon as I kill the CPU load and backlight, drops right back down, exactly as it should. There really isn't a lot of fat to trim, it's the lack of Optimus that kills the deal.

And no, for the unasked sub-sub-question, there is no way that Optimus can ever be enabled with the QHD screen, it's a hardware flaw that would require a whole new motherboard design. If you want to trade straight across, though, I'd consider trading my FHD for a QHD, I could use the pixels. *wink*

 

Wow, 8W is pretty impressive. With the FHD display under Linux I do not get the consumption of power under 18W right now. Of course, that comes also due to the fact that the nvidia card, i.e optimus, is not in power saving mode, but some kernel versions before I managed that and still did not get under 15W.

 

Under Linux I don't quite get as low, but I can get under 15W. Bringing up the Nvidia card with something like Bumblebee and re-stowing it into the proper full-off state is essential, otherwise the Quadro alone chews up 10-20W while doing nothing at all.

 

hi, may you please tell me what program you used under linux to tell the power used.

thanks

 

Not a program, a device. Programs can't be 100% accurate, they'll never include wastage at the power supply and similar. I've accounted for that, in fact, my 8W number is the measured draw minus the AC adapter's idle draw, which was 5 or 6 watts, can't recall.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

 

cool, never thought of such, your right, this is the correct way,

cheers