PowerMizer in Vista does NOT clock down ever.

I know there have been tons of threads of people w the same concern. Nvidia states to just put the power settings in power saving mode in vista, however that doesn't work at all, neither on battery or AC. My laptop (Dell D630) always runs at full 3d speed which is 400 core 400 memory. This really hurts battery life and heats up this machines which doesn't really have adequate cooling especially when running the GPU full blast.

I've tried apps like Rivatuner to try and force it into low power 2d mode but nothing sticks and I am out of ideas. Help please! pretty please~!

 

That's odd since I'm using Vista and PowerMizer does exactly what it is supposed to do. Have you checked clocks in GPUz? What are your notebook specs? Are you running a clean install of Vista?

 

Driver version?
I have also no problems with PowerMizer...

 

I did have an issue with powermizer and WinXP, although I was using 169.04 and mine DOES NOT CLOCK UP. So, there really are probs with nvidia's powermizer.

 

I am using 179.67 which should be a laptop driver. I tried GPU-Z and the clocks are ALWAYS running at full power 3d (400/400) rather than low power 2d or low power 3d. I can't even force the clocks down using rivatuner....this has been going on for a long long time even when I was using driver versions 160.

The only solution I came up with is to set Rivatuner to apply "overclocking" at startup to 200/200 rather than 400/400. But never have I see it run at standard low power 2d even on battery (169/100). Changing Vista power policies does nothing.

Help is VERY VERY appreciated. I am begging to hand out rep points for this one!

 

Have you tried this;
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=273276
I have tested this on my card and it works.

 

mine downclocks. I've watched it do it in Rivatuner.

I had to change the setting of mine in the registry to keep that from happening.

instructions in sig.

 

Thanks for those instructions in your sig. I've tried every variation over hours and unfortunately my laptop is still always stuck in 400/400 high power 3d. Sigh......The only thing I can do at the moment is to underclock via RivaTuner. And for some reason RivaTuner doesn't always apply the settings at startup, so I have to manually check each time. Half the time it does, half the time it doesnt. I know most people here are more concerned with making powermizer run at higher speeds, but can anyone help me with running it at low power 2d or low power 3d speeds rather than full blast?

 

Didin't the PowerMizer Switch work for you?

 

Not at all. It made no difference whatsoever. I am using a 179 series driver so that is a laptop driver and not a desktop driver so PowerMizer should work. BLAST!!!!

Oh well, all i will do now it just "overclock" with Rivatuner from the full speed of 400/400 down to 200/200. That is good enough for me I suppose. I just would have really rather had dynamically switching GPU speeds, especially since I have an Intel X9000 which shares the same heatsink and fan and it can get quite hot. (Incidentally I undervolt that CPU as well too, but the lowest it goes is 1.0V. But one neat thing is that at the highest speeds of 2.8ghz, it tested stably at only 1.037V).

I googled the hell out of my entire day trying to figure out the power mizer mystery and most people seem to just want to clock up rather than clock down. Oh well....but hey, thanks for your help with my issue and a Rep you deserve for helping a fellow out. I also tried it on battery power alone and it stubbornly wouldn't go to low power states. I have a small hunch that it is because of my dual GPUs, but both GPUs use the same unified driver, so I have no idea.

However PLEASE don't consider this a dead thread, if someone figures this out, help! Thanks again.

 

The issues might be other programs running in the background. Do you have a hardware monitor running, or any other diagnostics in your tray?

I've found that running Everest prevents powermizer from downclocking, but as soon as I close the program, it's drops right down.