MSI-1651 Battery Life

What is the maximum battery life anyone has gotten on their MSI-1651 (GX620)?

Currently I have gotten 2 hours and 20 minutes max with turbo battery. Can I somehow underpower the 9600GT so that it sucks up less battery? Compared to the MacBook Pro's 3-5 hours of battery life, and other notebooks with dedicated cards that get 3 hours +, is there a reason why the MSI-1651 can't do the same?

Thanks.

 

You're not going to be able to reduce the 9600M GT's clock speed or voltage much. It's already running at a meager 169 MHz core/100 MHz memory in 2D/idle mode, and the factory voltage is already at 1V. What you can do, however, is adjust the CPU's voltage and speed throttling with RMClock.

 

I will try that, what is the max battery life you have achieved with or without adjustments? Thanks.

 

Do you have the 9-cell or 6-cell battery? I'm looking at one of these too and would like to know.

 

I have a 6-cell battery. I may charge it up to 100% and let it run down, timing it along the way again, just to make sure my times are accurate.

 

I can get 2:35 if just browsing slides. That's on turbo battery with wifi on.

 

Yep, I got 2h 30m under Ubuntu 8.10 32bit last night, w/the 9600 @ 169/100 lowest backlight setting, and WiFi usage which was a fairly heavyish drain as I was d/ling and installing apps and packages. (6cell std. battery.)

Oh yeah, it's the WSXGA+, P8600, 2x2GB Kingston ValueRAM CL5, and the 5400 RPM WD 320GB hdd and it already feels more responsive than my desktop which mainly uses/has AMD Athlon x2 4800+, 4x512MB Mushkin DDR-400, 250GB WD 7200RPM, 7600GT KO system.

(Going to replace that 7600 soonish as GPU prices are INCREDIBLE @ newegg, they had 9800s for a little over $100 when I looked the other week and 4850s for c. $10 more... and either the Asus/MSI 4850 with the heatpipe + fan was reported idling in the 30sC and maxxing c. mid-50sC which is REALLY good for a decent GPU. Too bad that ATI linux drivers continue to completely suck.)

 

cutterjohn,

Being an early adopter can be annoying. Just went to PNB to check to see what I could have gotten in my notebook now for the same price:
2 more GB of RAM
160GB more HDD space

While it is nice to see the electronics industry constantly offer us more for less, it can suck when it happens only a couple months after you bought an item.

Going to test the battery life soon so see how high I can get it.

 

Can you safely lower the CPU below .9250V and the mutiplier (FID) below 6.0x? And how would you do this on rmclock?

 

Als, does anyone know why the Macbook can get 3+ hours with a 9600GT and the MSI-1651 can't?

 

For one thing, the Macbook has switchable graphics i.e. it switches to the integrated 9400M GS to save power while the 1651 wil always use the 9600M GT regardless.

 

Macbook Pro's have a 9600GT and people can get 3ish hours of battery with it on. Plus it does not automatically switch, you have to do it manually (it has to log off sometimes to do so successfully).

 

The Macbook Pro has a switchable 9600M GT and 9400M GS though no?

Well idk much about Macbooks, but I was assuming that switchable graphics help augment battery life since the Lenovo T series have that feature and their battery life ranks very well.

But other factors come into play. The 1651 has lights and other do-hickies which may end up draining juice and therefore reducing battery life. Last I checked, Apple products tend to have a more basic/simple design to conserve the most power they can (and therefore boast a better battery life on their specs like the Ipod for example).

 

Three things:
Does the macbook pro have a 9cell battery? My 1651 (and likely yours too) only has a 6cell.

The 1651 costs SIGNIFICANTLY less than the mac. Their lowend notebook is closest in price to the 1651s that we have, and is just horrendously overpriced, then again so are ALL Apple products.

OSX MAY be a bit better in power regulation than XP/Vista/linux distros, as even my older powerbooks and ibooks all got at least 3h on battery and usually closer to 3.5-4h. They may do more aggressive CPU scaling, and drive control than other OSes. BTW: to get these times I pretty much had the backlight at the lowest setting, and had cpu scaling enabled. I also lowered the harddrive spindown time to lower than normal.

 

Has anyone tried Windows 7 on their MSI-1651? I have only tested it in a virtual environment. This may increase the battery life as Windows 7 is supposed to be optimized for laptops and battery life.

@cutterjohn,

Can't seem to find out whether the Macbook Pro has a 6-cell or 9-cell battery...