Lowest wattage contest

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marlinspike · #1 Post by **marlinspike** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 2:10 pm

Who here gets the lowest wattage on their T60? I was inspired when I saw this
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=33096

Note your screen and gpu. The lowest I've seen on mine is 11.85W, and that was only for a little bit. Typically, when I'm using the computer but still doing what I can to save power, I'm at around 12.5W. Anyone doing better?

christopher_wolf · #2 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 4:17 pm

Did you turn off WiFi, Bluetooth, and any other wireless connectivity options? That can get the wattage down, alot.

marlinspike · #3 Post by **marlinspike** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 4:18 pm

Well...I turned off that main switch. I was getting about 6 hours on my 15" Flexview so (9-cell), it's not like the wattage I was getting is bad. I just wonder if anybody else gets better.

Badger · #4 Post by **Badger** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 4:50 pm

13.00 W with bluetooth off, wifi on, screen dimmed the entire way, maximum CPU speed set to "Low" in PowerManager, and GPU at "optimal battery" in ATI powerplay.

marlinspike · #5 Post by **marlinspike** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:31 pm

Ok, I disabled the CD drive and the touchpad and I've gotten it down to 11.5 with it running, though I just let it sit for 2 minutes so it wasn't really fair. When I actually use it (typing a word doc), it goes up to 12.55 (I was mistaken, it was 12.85 before, not 12.5), so it saves .3W to turn off the CD drive and touchpad even if you aren't using them. I know what I'll be doing before I go on any trips (this is with everything off, all the settings I know of set the most towards battery saving - except I put the hard drive bios type stuff back to the defaults).

EDIT: Actually taking out the CD drive gets me down to 11.93W when in use. Speaking of which...wasn't this supposed to gcome with a bezel to stick in the Ultrabay when traveling? If not, is there such a thing I can purchse?

Using the LAN card (not wireless) takes an additional 1.92 W and I don't have wireless in the dorm so I don't know what my wireless adds but I have a feeling it must be more than that.

Badger, is yours the 14" screen or do you have some magic trick to get it that low wattage with the wireless on?

christopher_wolf · #6 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 6:26 pm

marlinspike wrote:[...] bezel to stick in the Ultrabay when traveling? If not, is there such a thing I can purchse?

The Thinkpad travel bezel; basically a shell for the Ultrabay. They are pretty rare from the IBM/Lenovo site themseleves, but you can find them on the Marketplace here as well as on eBay. I keep forgetting the thing's part number though.

marlinspike · #7 Post by **marlinspike** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 6:41 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:
marlinspike wrote:[...] bezel to stick in the Ultrabay when traveling? If not, is there such a thing I can purchse?
The Thinkpad travel bezel; basically a shell for the Ultrabay. They are pretty rare from the IBM/Lenovo site themseleves, but you can find them on the Marketplace here as well as on eBay. I keep forgetting the thing's part number though.

Wow, that's annoying. This is 2006, if a product is being made availability should not be an issue.

Also, I can't figure out this whole power thing. I made no changes, I'm on wireless right now, and only 12.69W.

laundromatt · #8 Post by **laundromatt** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:27 am

what the heck? the lowest i can get mine to is around 15 (lowest lcd setting, lowest performance setting on power manager, wireless off).

the numbers you guys are mentioning are pretty impressive - what are you doing to get it that low?

gearguy · #9 Post by **gearguy** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 6:11 am

Just be glad you're being more environment friendly than those Pathetic Desktop Gamers who have like 850 Watt power supplies so they can play games that look just about the same as the latest 360 releases. (and a 360 uses a fraction of that power)

marlinspike · #10 Post by **marlinspike** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 10:00 am

laundromatt wrote:what the heck? the lowest i can get mine to is around 15 (lowest lcd setting, lowest performance setting on power manager, wireless off).

the numbers you guys are mentioning are pretty impressive - what are you doing to get it that low?

Turn that main radio switch off (so it's not just the wireless but the infrared and everything), then I made my own power profile with lowest cpu speed, balance all parameters for the fan setting, display brightness 0 of 7, after one minute lower the refresh rate to 40hz, stop hard disk from spinning after 30 seconds. Also, I have CD-ROM speed at silent, though I don't know if that matters. And don't be playing music or games or processing photos (my test procedure, to keep it at a constant, is to open Word and just type randomly for about 3 minutes - I find that for some reason I start around 15W but things slowly come down over the course of 2 minutes, I'm guessing things take a bit of time to slowly come down - the fan takes a bit of juice so once it shuts off it helps things). Also make sure you don't have any background processes going like an on-access virus scanner.

Also, notice what I said about not just wireless but just being connected to the internet takes a bit of juice. And make sure your ThinkLight is off. Finally, make sure there is nothing plugged into your USB ports.

Badger · #11 Post by **Badger** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 10:32 am

marlinspike wrote:Badger, is yours the 14" screen or do you have some magic trick to get it that low wattage with the wireless on?

Yes, mine is the 14" screen. There's no DVD drive either, I pretty much always have the UltraBay battery in. My touchpad is also disabled because I never use it.

Right now I'm in Vista (my earlier post was made from XP Pro) and PowerManager is reporting 16.5-17.5 W, with the same settings as in XP.

Maybe that's why my computer emits a high frequency pitch whenever it runs off battery in Vista.

Edit: That's with Aero and all the fancy-pants stuff

laundromatt · #12 Post by **laundromatt** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 12:30 pm

after following all the suggestions given here and on the x60 thread, i got it down to 10.86, giving me an estimated battery time of 4 hours. thanks to marlinspike for the pointers.

not bad, but i don't think i would use it much with the lowest lcd setting and wireless off.

Badger · #13 Post by **Badger** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 1:56 pm

Back in XP, I turned the screen all the way down, ATI Powerplay still at optimal battery life and PowerManager still set to "Low" CPU, and this time with WiFI OFF, I just saw 10.94W and 7:00 hours of estimated battery life (6 cell + ultrabay).

Now with WiFI on, it's at 13.35 W and 6:00 hours estimated batt. life.

marlinspike · #14 Post by **marlinspike** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:08 pm

laundromatt wrote:after following all the suggestions given here and on the x60 thread, i got it down to 10.86, giving me an estimated battery time of 4 hours. thanks to marlinspike for the pointers.

not bad, but i don't think i would use it much with the lowest lcd setting and wireless off.

I'm guessing that's the 6-Cell and a 14" screen?

laundromatt · #15 Post by **laundromatt** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 5:06 pm

yup.

it would be interesting to see if the intel card required more or less juice than the atheros card...

Miller88 · #16 Post by **Miller88** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 5:37 pm

Where do we find all this info?

bitsoffish · #17 Post by **bitsoffish** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 5:58 pm

got 8.6W while i was using it outside today... screen dimmed all the way down. wifi off bluetooth off. on intel gma950 + 3945abg

7. A word about the "LOCATION" field..

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READ THIS PART CAREFULLY !

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Please enter at least the city and/or state that is your home or current location. Earth, USA, your telephone number area code and Southern Hemisphere, while interesting and fun for you, do not respect the BBS or other users. A location shows other users what time zone you are located in and thus will facilitate a faster answer to your problem. ALSO, your location tends to build a thinkpad owners community. Any "silly" location will delay your activation and could result in your account not being activated/deactivated.

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marlinspike · #18 Post by **marlinspike** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 6:43 pm

Miller88 wrote:Where do we find all this info?

Single left click on the IBM battery icon (not the windows one) and click show, then select show wattage when on battery

Terrahawk · #19 Post by **Terrahawk** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 6:41 pm

laundromatt wrote:yup.

it would be interesting to see if the intel card required more or less juice than the atheros card...

Anyone have an figures for the Intel card yet? The quick test I did on my IBM Mini PCI II (Atheros) shows that it uses about 1.5 watts while active. This is with medium power saving turned on.

Current used while on: 0.69A
Current used while off: 0.57A

Battery voltage: 15.4V (62% charge)

marlinspike · #20 Post by **marlinspike** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 7:21 pm

Is there a way to test just the card?

Terrahawk · #21 Post by **Terrahawk** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 7:36 pm

Not easily, as far as I am aware. By "not easily", I mean that you may need to get into your card slot, find the supply lines and patch an ammeter of some sort into *all* of them.

laundromatt · #22 Post by **laundromatt** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:03 pm

Terrahawk wrote: Anyone have an figures for the Intel card yet? The quick test I did on my IBM Mini PCI II (Atheros) shows that it uses about 1.5 watts while active. This is with medium power saving turned on.

Current used while on: 0.69A
Current used while off: 0.57A

Battery voltage: 15.4V (62% charge)

i have an intel card. how did you get these figures?

Terrahawk · #23 Post by **Terrahawk** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 11:17 pm

I used the Battery Information window (left click on the green battery on your task bar, click on "Battery Information" down the bottom of the menu).

It has readouts for your battery voltage, current draw (or charging current) and power usage as well as estimated time remaining.

marlinspike · #24 Post by **marlinspike** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 11:25 pm

Anybody else find that their comp uses more wattage when on battery if it's coming out of hibernate rather than if you had booted it up with it running on battery?

laundromatt · #25 Post by **laundromatt** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 3:02 am

Terrahawk wrote:I used the Battery Information window (left click on the green battery on your task bar, click on "Battery Information" down the bottom of the menu).

It has readouts for your battery voltage, current draw (or charging current) and power usage as well as estimated time remaining.

sorry, what i meant was - did you just take the measurements with the wireless switch on, then off? or did you do something else in between the measurements?

Terrahawk · #26 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 3:13 am

laundromatt wrote:did you just take the measurements with the wireless switch on, then off?

Yup, that's exactly what I did. It's a bit of a quick and dirty measurement (I did wait a minute for all activity to settle down though).

laundromatt · #27 Post by **laundromatt** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 2:29 pm

the intel card uses about 2 watts, from what i can tell.

10.73 Off
12.67 On

Terrahawk · #28 Post by **Terrahawk** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 5:51 pm

Thanks

Looks like the Intel and the Atheros are fairly evenly matched for power draw.

dawarner · #29 Post by **dawarner** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:19 pm

Funny, I was just looking at power consumption the other day. I average 12-13 watts with screen dimmed to the max and the x1400.

What I found interesting was that the WiFi only seems to draw less than a watt... The bluetooth however, when connected to a device (my mouse), draws 4 WATTS.

I've repeated this several times and am sure it is correct. I am using fn-F5 to turn the bluetooth on and off. Just enabling the bluetooth does not cause the draw, it must be connected to a device.

marlinspike · #30 Post by **marlinspike** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:21 pm

dawarner wrote:Funny, I was just looking at power consumption the other day. I average 12-13 watts with screen dimmed to the max and the x1400.

What I found interesting was that the WiFi only seems to draw less than a watt... The bluetooth however, when connected to a device (my mouse), draws 4 WATTS.

I've repeated this several times and am sure it is correct. I am using fn-F5 to turn the bluetooth on and off. Just enabling the bluetooth does not cause the draw, it must be connected to a device.

I think you'll find the wireless draws significantly more energy when it is actually in use (i.e. not just on but actually downloading/uploading)

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