Dell Vostro 1500 / Windows XP performance reduced with battery

I occassionaly have the need to run my laptop on battery and even use it to game. Unfortunately it seems that the performance is greatly reduced. I have gone into the nvidia control panel and disable the "PowerMizer" settings too.

But performance is still greatly diminished.

Any suggestions?

 

Have you looked at the Power options?

 

yes, but see nothing that would change CPU or GPU settings.

 

What is the actual Power scheme? (in CP --> Performance and maintenance --> Power options)

 

I have the same problem , tried everything and nothing works.

Css is still playable with a few bots and so is half life 2 , but cod4 is totally unplayable at 9 fps.

 

I use NotebookHardwareControl and can choose power management and CPU clock in both A/C mode and Battery mode.. this way I can play @ full power even if I'm running on batteries (although battery life decreases big time!)

 

I downloaded NotebookHardwareControl from here:

http://www.pbus-167.com/

When I install and run it it gives me an ERROR:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Is there some package that needs to be installed in order for this to run?

 

try dl it from here: http://www.p35-forum.de/files/nhc_2.0_pre_release_06_dell.zip

let me know if it works

 

Did you install the Dell version of NHC?

 

LOL - thanks. Will try that this evening when I get home from work. Didn't even see that. Wonder what's different from Dell's and why don't they include it in the main one?

Plus it needs MS.NET 2.0 framework installed.

I dunno if I want to do all that. There's got to be a better way rather than running a background app?

 

I have it installed and it works fine, no spyware and no nothing.. only takes up 1 space on the task bar (when you first open it there are like 3 icons but you can disable them easily).. I forgot to tell you about the MS.NET 2.0 framework sorry, you can download it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...cb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&DisplayLang=en

You can also control the HD power management and disable that annoying clicking sound some people have (including me).. I'm usually iffy about installing these programs, but believe me it works fine and doesn't give ya any problems

 

Ok, I got it running. But now how do I set it to improve performance on battery? Also CPU voltage control is disabled. I've been using RM Clock, but if I'm going to run this might as well use this instead if I'm going to be running another task in the background.

Under CPU Speed I set battery to: Max Performance
PowerMizer settings option is also disabled even if I enable it in the nvidia control panel. That looks like I should be able to throttle it using that, but I can't select it.

 

Anyone found a solution for this yet ? I never had probs gaming on battery with my old dell drivers but these awesome 169.09 drivers give me horrible battery gaming performance ! :/

 

Anyone figure this out yet? I decided to register, figuring it might "open" these options up for me. But no go. If the video settings can go maximum with battery, and I can use it for CPU voltage throttling, it would be very nice. I am using RMClock right now to down volt my CPU for battery life and better overclock temps for GPU. Works fine but if I can maximize performance on battery with NHC then I'd rather just run one program.