The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    High battery drain in Optimus mode (W520)

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by 3xP053r_, Nov 15, 2011.

  1. 3xP053r_

    3xP053r_ Newbie

    Reputations:
    13
    Messages:
    9
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    EDIT: I also posted on Lenovo forums, where it got sorted out: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Serie...-drain-in-Optimus-mode-W520/m-p/592483#M22001

    Long story short:

    - Open Hardware Monitor showing CPU activity in tray was causing Optimus to use discrete graphics.

    - While the tooltip and balloon of nVidia tray icon clearly say that there is no activity on discrete GPU, it can still be active for some hidden program and the icon indicates that with its color (colored = on, gray = off); lesson learned: if it is colored, do not look for driver/settings issue, but rather try turning off applications, even when the icon says no applications are using it.
     
  2. Colonel O'Neill

    Colonel O'Neill Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    300
    Messages:
    935
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Yeah I noticed that too when I tried to hook OHM into Rainmeter.
    You should use the other Optimus tool ("NVidia Optimus GPU State Tool") that tells you "Off/Idle/On" + the process name. OHM will put the GPU into "Idle", which the other tool will report as "Off".