Vista Power Consumption Revisited

[smaug]

OK, I remember all the discussions about the power consumption on the x60 in vista. I noticed that my x60 was running hot and staying at around 15 watts of power consumption (having the battery icon being able to display watts consumed is both helpful and leads to compulsions)

So, I ran CPUz and noticed that the processor was running at 1.8 Ghz even though I had it set for "adaptive" in the power scheme and Windows Vista wasn't under any load. That is definietly not good and would explain many things.

After fiddling and fiddling, I think I came up with a solution. I downloaded the most recent beta of RMClock (which is Vista compatible), found in this thread:

http://forum.rightmark.org/topic.cgi?id=6:1016

First, the ulv core duo does not seem to be able to be undervolted as none of the custom voltages seemed to work. Secondly, I noticed that the CPU load hovered around 50% whereas the OS load was at 1 or 2% and no, I have no idea why that would be. My guess is that the Lenovo power driver uses the CPU load to determine speed stepping and something either in the driver or in my system is loading the CPU, but not the OS (somehow).

Anyway I was able to get the x60 to start properly speedstepping with the following settings:
Multi-CPU Load Calc: Average of CPU Loads
Use OS load-based management checked
Both Battery and AC Power using Performance on Demand profile with all "Use P-state Transitions" options checked.
Under "Advanced CPU Settings," check the following:
Under "Processor" All the "enhanced low power states settings" (be sure to check the apply at startup checkbox)
Under "Platform," Enter C4 on C3 command and "Enable Normal Throttling" (again, be sure to check the apply at startup checkbox
With these options checked, my wattage has gone from averaging around 16W with the machine getting pretty warm and the fan running to hovering around 11W and often dropping to 9W. I'm finally getting a little over 2 hours with the 4 cell battery and the machines seems to sleep faster as well.

Performance also seems to still be good. Anyway, I wanted to share the fruits of my labor with everyone since I've gotten so much good stuff from this board.

[byunnbi]

Thanks for the tips - I'd long been experimenting with quite a bit of settings to try to regain battery life on my T41p running Vista, but haven't had too much luck. Here's what I found, for you t4x users (again, bear in mind I'm running a t41p, specs below):

I'm using RMClock beta as well, and all the settings there work properly for me.

~14.6-15.5 Wh @ Full Brightness, Wireless On, 600mhz @ .732v, HDD running, light use to idle.

~10.7-11.1 Wh @ Minimum Brightness, Wireless Off, 600 mhz @ .732v, HDD off, light use to idle.

Under both states, ATi Powerplay was enabled, and btw, enabling/disabling Aero didn't make any difference for me.

I just can't get any lower than 10.7 Wh, though under XP with the same lowest settings, I would average 8.0-8.2 Wh.

Overall, the difference in battery life is as follows:
With first settings above, XP = 4hr 40 min. Vista = 3hr 15 min.
With 2nd settings above, Xp = 6hr 45 min. Vista = 4hr 20 min.
* these are times based on my nearly dead 9 cell battery (~29.7Wh/71.27Wh) and ultrabay (23.3Wh/23.7Wh)

Specs of my t41p:
Banias 1.7ghz
1 gb, FireGL T2 128mb
60gb 7200rpm
14.1 sxga