Playing game lags when in battery mode

For some reason, there is a loss of performance when the adapter of my m14x is unplugged. I tried playing WoW / Starcraft and its laggy, it feels like my laptop automatically uses the Intel HD Graphic when using battery mode. I also made sure that the battery/alien fusion are set to High Performance but to no avail. The good news is that my laptop does not shut down by itself. Need help please!

 

I just called dell and apparantly, this has been a known issue to some of the people. They are releasing a new graphic card vbios on the may 20th. But just wondering.. any1 experiencing this?

 

There's a thread on here about the laptop crashing when trying to play games in battery mode so I would say if you're able to play it at all using the battery you're doing better than most people.

 

Greetings,
You also need to open command center and change your settings to high in fusion. Unfortunately, it will then shut down.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

Its already set to high performance.. i don't get battery shutdown, its just i am getting much lower performance when on battery mode.. not sure why.

 

you need to set the graphics card to high performance not just the setting

 

i did that too, i went to nvidia control panel and set it to the high performance.

 

The settings in windows' Power Options are the same as the one's in Fusion. Is there a diff which one we use to make changes?

 

It's NOT in the Nvidia Control Panel. If you got to the power setting options > change Plan Settings, then click on Advanced Options.
A small window pops up with A LOT of options. You have to scroll down to the Graphics Processing Unit power management.

Change it from "Balanced" to "Max" while on battery.

 

I have the same lag problem. I was getting about 25 FPS on DIRT 2 with all settings at mid and lowering the resolution to 1360 x 768 (battery + high performance mode). The second I plugged in my AC adapter, my FPS shot up into the high 60s and low 70s. Even when I maxed out DIRT 2 on 1600x900, anti aliasing and everything on high, I got 40 FPS (on AC power). No lie. The difference is that huge.

If you go into advanced settings, as a previous commenter said, you can change the GPU to MAX PERFORMANCE on battery in high performance (by default it is set to balanced). When I did that, I was getting the same 65+ FPS, but my laptop shut down on lap 2 of my first race.

 

So the m14x will have a GPU update or I don't understand correctly?

 

Yup.. same here... I was so happy when I figured out how to max out the GPU on battery mode... then WHAM! The entire computer just shut down.

IT's kinda stupid... like some kinda big oversight in the design of the laptop.

I hope they fix it.

 

No, itll just be like a drivers update.

 

Oh ok, I hope there will be a bios update soon for the fan issues and shutdown issues, I don't purchased mine atm but I hope when I'll get mine these problems will be fixed, also expecting the SATA III update because I want to buy an OCZ vertex 3 in the future.

 

Are you sure? The issue about laggy gaming on battery mode is just an easy to fix setting in the power management profile. It's not really an issue. The issue is the computer shutting down when we actually set the computer to use the GPUs full power.

I think if they are going to do anything, it'll be a BIOS update to fix the issue with the battery. Battery seems to be the main culprit here altogether.

 

He just thought that everyone meant the m14x is getting a whole new GPU, I just said drivers so he'd understand. Yes it would really be bios.