Data Collection: How much power an XPS 16 uses

I decided to branch this topic off from the other throttling topic. The purpose of checking the power consumption is to possibly find a correlation between normal or abnormal power usage and throttling. If this thread serves no other purpose, it will at least give everyone an idea of how much power their computer is using depending on its load (I know you're interested).

You can use Vista/Windows 7's built in tool for measuring wattage, using these instructions:

If you want to help, post your system specs (model, cpu, graphics card, and screen type), and check the power consumption at idle, running furmark, running prime95, and possibly running both. If you know your laptop is throttling on a test, say so.

Please set every power option set to maximum power/maximum performance including ATI POWERPLAY, this makes a major difference with Furmark!

 

My System: XPS 1645, i7 720QM with 4670 and WLED screen at full brightness

Here are the results:
Average idle power, 27.4 watts
Prime95 small FFTs 8 threads, 63 watts (12 multiplier the whole time)
Furmark by itself, 75watts average, steady 18fps (no throttling) spikes up to 86watts (probably due to some unrelated service using the CPU)
FurMark+Prime: up to 95 watts (multipliers at 7 pretty much instantly), 92 watt average, system crash (instant power cut) after 2 minutes

 

Prime by itself (blend test 8 threads)=average watts 68
Furmark by itself average watts=75 (some throttling)

Both=multipliers drop down to 7 instantly

Then 2 minutes after that instant power cut (WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THIS ABOUT?!?!)

More people need to run these tests...cbaty if you're reading this since you've had sucess with A10, try this test out....

 

If anyone got the balls to...

For those who have 130 watt chargers... how bout you grab a volt meter and tap into the electrical line of an outlet to see how much power the XPS is using

 

When running on Battery (with Furmark+Prime), my Multi is down at 7 (power settings etc are max. for both).

Anyway, solved it via TS (set it to 12 and not 13) for few seconds until it decided enough was enough and shut itself off. In that time I saw 104W.

Running A09 nowadays.

add:
Prime (small FFTs) alone shows 12 Multi and around 62-63W.
Furmark (full brightness) runs at around 69W (peaked at 72W).

 

To launch Windows Performance Monitor
- Click Start, click in the Start Search box, type perfmon, and press ENTER

"Set the scale to 0.001 so it converts the milliwatts data to watts DC"
- I set the scale but it still read 2,400.00, actually no matter what i changed the scale to it would always read the same?

1645/i7-720/5730/SSD/WLED/A09 BIOS
(*System does not throttle w/FurMark + Prime95 on AC power)
- screen set to max brightness

Idle: avg-24.2 min-23.5 max-25.7
FurMark: avg-72.3 min-70.9 max-73.5
Prime95: avg-55.7 min-55.2 max-58.6
FM+95: avg-77.5 min-73.5 max-80.6 (throttling @ 9.00-11.00)

 

1645/i7-720/4670/320GB 5.4k/WLED/A09 BIOS (this is my old system)
- screen set to max brightness

Idle: avg-25.5 min-24.0 max-26.7
FurMark: avg-70.2 min-68.9 max-73.4
Prime95: avg-61.9 min-62.0 max-61.6
FM+95: avg-76.7 min-73.5 max-81.3 (near instant throttling @ 7.00-8.00)

 

This test is quite useless as the Battery throttles straight away, so it will never show the 'real power draw'.

If I remember correctly, the very early BIOS versions didn't throttle on Battery at all so if someone goes back to those versions and then does this test, it might show something..

 

I thought there was a chance that some people's CPU/GPU would just happen to require more power to run when at full GPU or full CPU power.

 

Sorry, didn't meant that to sound rude, it's just a shame Dell won't tell the truth and we can't really see the real data.

I just rolled back to A03 to see if my memory was right and it seems it wasn't. On Battery, it still goes to 7 Multi with both running and turns itself off in few seconds of running TS (to imitate full load at 12 Multi, no Turbo). I'm back at A09 now.

After going back to A09, I checked how many Watts Hardware Monitor shows the CPU uses when running Furmark alone - it's pretty stable at 15.34W with few Turbo peaks at 55.04W (which we can ignore as Prime only allows it to go to 45W).

So Furmark (mine peaked at 72W) + 29.66W (45W - 15.34W) = 101.6W. I've already seen my system draw 104W and climbing before it turned itself off, so even that doesn't show the truth..