battery life of ATI vs. Intel graphics

[jon787]

Anyone know about how much difference in battery life I'm gonna see between getting an Intel graphics vs. ATI X1300 graphics?

I'm debating between the two configs (the site that can't be named limits the flexibility of the choices):
1.66 GHz Core 2 Duo
1 GB RAM
Intel Graphics
14.1" XGA TFT
Intel 3945 a/b/g wireless
60 GB HD

1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo
1 GB RAM
ATI X1300
14.1" SXGA+ TFT
Intel 3945 a/b/g wireless
80 GB HD


Also will a 9-cell get me 50% more battery life or is it less than that?

[agarza]

The question you should be asking first if you need discrete or integrated graphics. A T60 with Intel GMA950 would be a very quiet and cool machine (the fan would not stay on all the time), but if you're a moderate gamer you should consider discrete graphics.

In terms of battery life, the ATI GFX could be underclocked to about 80/80 so that battery life is improved.

On my T42p I get about 3.5-4 hours depending on the usage (CPU undervolted to 0.716 and FireGL T2 to 70-70MHz)

It's better to know what use will the laptop serve for. Hence you should answer yourself. Good luck

[jon787]

Well I'm trying to replace a 4.5 year old Dell Inspiron 8200. That thing was a bit of a beast and im trying to scale back from doing a desktop replacement style machine. (I'm not doing to good at this)

I'm trying to get out of the gaming laptop mindset, but if the GMA 950 is gonna stop me from occasionally binging on older FPSes like Quake 3 Arena or Enemy Territory then its out. Or if it might hinder DVD playback. If I go with the GMA 950, I might as well go with a X60s and get more portability out of it.

Any idea if you can shutdown an entire CPU core for better battery life? (something that just popped into my head)

A T60 with Intel GMA950 would be a very quiet and cool machine (the fan would not stay on all the time),

Are you saying that the fan in the T60 is going to be running all the time with the 1.83 GHz/ATI X1300 config?

[tomh009]

GMA 950 definitely runs cooler; on my dad's T60 the fan rarely turns on.

Yes, the GMA 950 will still play games, it just won't be the cutting edge of frame rates for the latest games coming out now. And even my X31 does nice DVD playback -- I don't actually think DVD is very demanding on the graphics, more so on the CPU which has to do the decoding.

[Zeus]

Well I'm trying to replace a 4.5 year old Dell Inspiron 8200. That thing was a bit of a beast and im trying to scale back from doing a desktop replacement style machine. (I'm not doing to good at this)

I'm trying to get out of the gaming laptop mindset, but if the GMA 950 is gonna stop me from occasionally binging on older FPSes like Quake 3 Arena or Enemy Territory then its out. Or if it might hinder DVD playback. If I go with the GMA 950, I might as well go with a X60s and get more portability out of it.

Any idea if you can shutdown an entire CPU core for better battery life? (something that just popped into my head)

A T60 with Intel GMA950 would be a very quiet and cool machine (the fan would not stay on all the time),

Are you saying that the fan in the T60 is going to be running all the time with the 1.83 GHz/ATI X1300 config?

No, I don't think you can shutdown one core. Remember, that die contains 1 physical, 2 logical processors. I don't think you can shutdown one.

about the fan on all the time, prbly not. But on more often than the Intel GMA.

[jon787]

I think you're thinking of hyperthreading, which was two logical cores on a single physical core.

Dual core is two physical cpu cores on a single cpu die.

[tomh009]

Correct. And for quad-core chips, Intel actually uses two dies, each with two cores.

Now, Intel doesn't automatically control individual cores, but AMD's quad-core CPUs debuting this year will control cores individually, adjusting speeds a core at a time and shutting down unneeded cores. It's reasonable to expect that even if AMD is most focused on performance per watt, Intel will follow suit here.

That said, there is manual control. It can be done easily at boot time, but I'm not aware of any Windows applications that can disable a core dynamically (the CPUs do support it though).

[dfumento]

Anyone know about how much difference in battery life I'm gonna see between getting an Intel graphics vs. ATI X1300 graphics?

See Graphically Long Battery Life in Lenovo Blogs.

Configuration
ThinkPad R60, Core Duo T2300, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD, DVD-ROM, ThinkPad a/b/g WiFi, 14" XGA, 9-cell battery
4.6 hours ATI Mobility Radeon X1300
7.8 hours Intel GMA 950

These are a set of the official company numbers, so don't post asking me why your model doesn't get those numbers, the point here is to illustrate the difference between integrated and discrete graphics.

The Inquirer: ATI and Nvidia should stop crowbarring desktop chips into laptops

[Zeus]

I think you're thinking of hyperthreading, which was two logical cores on a single physical core.

Dual core is two physical cpu cores on a single cpu die.

ur right. Sry for the false info

[vision33r]

Anyone know about how much difference in battery life I'm gonna see between getting an Intel graphics vs. ATI X1300 graphics?

I'm debating between the two configs (the site that can't be named limits the flexibility of the choices):
1.66 GHz Core 2 Duo
1 GB RAM
Intel Graphics
14.1" XGA TFT
Intel 3945 a/b/g wireless
60 GB HD

1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo
1 GB RAM
ATI X1300
14.1" SXGA+ TFT
Intel 3945 a/b/g wireless
80 GB HD


Also will a 9-cell get me 50% more battery life or is it less than that?

I have 9-cell battery and I can tell you that it is definitely 3:47 mins worth of web surfing on battery.

Gaming cut it down to 2:13mins but still very decent times for a game thats pretty graphically intensive.

I would rather get the x1400, the Intel will save you probably extra 15-20mins of battery but it just ain't the same as having a true DX9 capable chip that can handle Vista with Glass.

Supposedly GMA950 v2.0 will be able to do Glass in Vista.

[tomh009]

The current GMA 950 chipsets do run Aero. Games, not so much, but definitely Aero.

Official numbers from lenovo show much bigger differences in battery life:
http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=40

[jon787]

I ain't worried about Vista, I have no intentions of leaving it on the machine if it comes with it. I use Windows 2000 and it may not being as shiny, but it gets the same job done with fewer resources. (Actually I use Win2k in VMware on Linux)

That said, there is manual control. It can be done easily at boot time, but I'm not aware of any Windows applications that can disable a core dynamically (the CPUs do support it though).

My IA-32 manuals are a bit outdated (2004 editions) for this, so I'm not sure if just disabling SMP will really power down the second core. I didn't think about it until now, but I know someone at Intel I can ask. If the hardware supports it, then its a matter of kernel hacking to get the OS to support it.

[dfumento]

I would rather get the x1400, the Intel will save you probably extra 15-20mins of battery but it just ain't the same as having a true DX9 capable chip that can handle Vista with Glass.

If you read the post that I got out of Lenovo Blogs up above, you'll see that there is a substantial difference between the built-in and discrete chips:

4.6 hours ATI Mobility Radeon X1300
7.8 hours Intel GMA 950

Read the Lenovoblogs posting and The inquirer article referred to in my previous post in this thread.

[tomh009]

My IA-32 manuals are a bit outdated (2004 editions) for this, so I'm not sure if just disabling SMP will really power down the second core. I didn't think about it until now, but I know someone at Intel I can ask. If the hardware supports it, then its a matter of kernel hacking to get the OS to support it.

There is a Mac OS X utility available to do that somewhere out there. Intel makes reference to the ability as well:
http://www.intel.com/technology/itj/200 ... e_solo.htm

Further, I stumbled across some ACPI code that might or might not be relevant -- ACPI is something I never quite had the time to figure out:
http://www.odi.ch/prog/macbookpro/index.php
http://www.odi.ch/prog/macbookpro/power.conf

[jon787]

One of the other articles says even more. It sounds like the ACPI states of each processor can be handled independently until state C4. So Windows is already handling it and Linux or OSX can too.

http://www.intel.com/technology/itj/200 ... ontrol.htm