something wrong with my discharge rate?

Hey all,

I've been trying to increase my battery life, but I've been having a lot of trouble. I've already read all the battery optimization threads, but I find myself at a loss.

On battery bar, my capacity shows 67,710 mWh.

The lowest discharge rate I can reasonably get is 18,179 mW.

Here are my power saver settings:

lowest brightness, FX lighting off, wifi on, bluetooth off, no OC, TB on, minimum processor state: 1%, maximum processor state: 20%, all unnecessary programs closed, search and superfetch disabled, Wlan tray disabled, aliensense recognition diabled, sd card reader disabled,

and to top it all off, I have an Agility II ssd!

windows tells me my battery life from full while sitting on power saver is 3 hours, 31 minutes.

battery bar says it's full lifetime is 3 hours, 8 minutes.

What is going on with my battery life? Is something wrong with my battery? There's no wear on it, according to battery bar. Is there something wrong with my settings?

Any help would be VERY much appreciated. Thank you!

 

Sounds like the nvidia gpu is active, search this forum and get the nvidia optimus tool it'll show if it is active, after than install the new drivers 258.96 it should fix nvidia gpu kicking in when you don't want it to

 

Besure to clean install Nvidia driver.

Uninstall, reboot, safemode, driversweeper, reboot, install new driver.

 

Also try making sure Aero is not running, that eats up battery for me.

 

Download the nvidia optimus test tool to see if the gpu is turning off.

Disable any 3rd party update services.

 

I think the driver update helped, as my discharge rate seems to be lower, but I don't completely understand why a lower discharge rate doesn't change the full lifetime or battery time remaining-- when do those change? Do I have to do full discharges for them to adjust?

Also, is my capacity low? It seems like other people get 70K mWh

Is there anything I can do about it, or did I just get unlucky? Is it worth it to try to get a new one?

Thanks for all the help!

 

Yes, it takes time to update the batter time. That is part of the reason people use other software like battery bar.

Your battery capacity isn't low. Some people did get 70k, but that's not true for everyone. As software like battery bar shows, it's not even rated at the 67k you have, and the manual rates it at 63k, so given that you're above its rating, I doubt Dell would consider an exchange (and even if they did, the new one you get might be lower than the one you have now--your number isn't bad by any means).

 

Ah I see. Thanks for the quick and helpful reply! Right now, I'm getting 17,226 mW while surfing the web with full brightness and fx lighting. Does this sound about right to you? (Keeping in mind I also have an SSD!)

Thanks!

 

I just matched that setup and am getting 16-23k, so it sounds right to me. The 9k-11k quoted in other threads is without wireless, full dimness, idle with no programs open.

btw, it's not true in general that having an ssd means better battery life. It can be true, but it's not always true. Flash SSD Update: More Results, Answers : An Apology First ? And One New SSD To Prove Us Right for more info, but to summarize in a quote: