T400 Wattages

[Colonel O'Neill]

Just wondering what kind of wattages you get on a T400...

Mine are through the roof, idling around 15W-20W, normal running from 20W to 30W on battery power, on switchable but integrated, with wifi on, Windows 7 x64.

Brightness: 10/15
CPU: Adaptive, Deeper Sleep On
Fan: Balance All Parameters

Something is really really messed up.

[aeschylus]

I get around 8 to 10 watts running on vista x64 with all upgraded drivers and thinkvantage software. It's probably important to note that this is using the "energy star" plan in power manager and that I have a 5400 rpm hard drive as well as the 25 watt CPU. My wattage use jumped up to 15-20 in W7 and my battery life dropped accordingly (though, I tried an upgrade instead of a clean install). I chalk it up to immature drivers (at least in comparison to the t400 vista drivers) or attempting an upgrade instead of a clean install.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Perhaps, but Lenovo's already released their W7 preloaded laptops... I'd assume they'd post the best drivers on the site for others to download as well.

I wonder if someone who ordered a recent W7 preloaded laptop has the same problems?

[Tony Chan]

My T400 also gets around 8 - 10 watts when idling or when doing very light work, with wifi on ( wifi setup as max performance ). I also see that when using the trackpoint the wattage spikes up to 14-15watts for very short period of time. This is based on Windows 7 64bit RTM using the latest released ( not beta ) drivers.

Overall I see slight improvement when comparing with Vista 64 ( 9 - 11 watts when idling/light work ) on the same machine.

May be a fresh install with the latest Lenovo released driver will help?

My setup :
14" LED screen at around 6/15 brightness.
P8400 cpu ( which is a 25watt cpu ), adaptive, deep sleep on
Integrated graphics
Intel 5300 ( set to max performance ).
Bluetooth ( usually turned off ).
Falcon 64Gb SSD.
CDWR/DVDRW
Camera.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Okay, so the drivers will work properly, although using an SSD would probably cut consumption by a fair bit. Maybe using System Update will install everything as it should rather than doing each one individually by hand.

I will probably reinstall in 4 days, and post my new results here.

[Tony Chan]

I did not see much power saving switching from Seagate 7200.4 to Falcon 64gb ssd.

Although I've downloaded and installed all Win7 driver manually, my friend used System Update 4 and works as well.

Good luck.

[T400plus]

I have a T400 upgrade with intell terrible 2 GB extra memory, a 7200 rpm seagate 160 GB disk, a Blutooth card somewher The LCD is wxag+. I had to switch off wake up lan through bios otherwise the Devils inside the contraption would eat up 7 % overnight in sleep mode on a fully carged cpu.
I swithced off dynamic swithcing, wireless, turob memory to make my 9 cell bateery last for 6.5 Hrs. It is 1 year now and still it gives me > 5 Hrs(might be because it is mostly connected to mains).

I Have never mamanged to get 10 Watts power consumtion. How do the other get it. Was I swindled .I am not in U.S.A,Canada(wher the machine was purchased) or China(where it was assembled).I am in India ..a Green Energy country and I prefer energy savings!.

[caramerdo]

The lowest I can go with wireless on is 13W with a LED lcd, 5400 rpm hard drive, bluetooth off, fingerprint reader off, ultrabay dvd off.
But i'm on Linux. Usually my 6-cell battery lasts 4 to 4.5 hours for browsing/reading/listening to music, which is enough for me.

[icantux]

What do you guys check the wattage with?

[Colonel O'Neill]

It'll say Wattage under the battery tab in the Lenovo Power Manager.

And I noticed I could get a few watts lower by forcing integrated in BIOS. I saw a 7 hour prediction while completely idle and with screen on 5 bars of 15. It usually works out to be 3-4 hours. I have a 6-cell which just has to stick out the back -_-.

[Tony Chan]

What do you guys check the wattage with?

I look at the wattage usage in Power Manager, which updates data every 15 sec or so.

[icantux]

Neat! Never noticed that. Tks

[T400plus]

which power manager does Lenovo provide for this display?
Does it have to be downloaded seperately?
Is it correct?

[ryan1212]

With my clean install of win 7, and all the drivers through system update my machine idles around 15 watts. I do not have an LED screen, but I do have a 4200rpm hard drive. This is with the screen on 2 for brightness, wireless on, bluetooth off with the power manager set to maximum power savings.

Why is this so high? My old T40 used to idle around 10-12 watts with wireless on.

[Colonel O'Neill]

I am seeing virtually the same numbers under the same conditions (assuming you're running on integrated).

Kinda sucks to have 3-4 hours worth of battery power on a 6-cell.

Can anyone with a T400 with a preloaded Windows 7 tell us their side of the story? Has Lenovo done something magical with it to use less power?

EDIT: Maybe at the end of December I will bring back the Vista preload and see how that does in terms of battery life. Or dump a copy of XP or the retro 2000 onto it and see what happens.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Just a quick addition;

My parents' T60 with _DISCRETE_ graphics idles at 18W on maximum brightness.
My T400 idles on _INTEGRATED_ graphics at 15W on half brightness.

[ryan1212]

I changed my settings in BIOS (F1 key at startup) for power to maximum battery for when on battery and my wattage has dropped a lot. I now idle at around 10watts with wifi and 2/10 brightness, and 8 watts with the hardware wifi switch off. About the same as my 6 yr old T40!

[T400plus]

oh good. Can you give some readings of discrete versus switchable ?.
I have some lingering doubt ...I always use discrete ( xp/ sp 3) but it has never got hot
comapre to my T41(short fan) which spews out hot air.
Someone in this group informed me and it worked for me.Never to have both discrete and the
other setting enabled in BIOS for graphics. I have failed to understand what T400 does with both the graphic drivers enabled in BIOS.

[ryan1212]

With Vista and newer when set to switchable and discoverable by the OS, power manager lets you switch between them while windows is running. My wattage readings were with the switchable enabled and using the intel integrated card.

You could just use the ati card for regular use, then if you need battery life you can switch to the intel by right clicking on power manager in the system tray.

[Guz]

Ok, factory Win7 install

Integrated Graphics
Power Plan: Maximum Battery Life
Wattage: 9.5 W (Lowest at Idle), 10.25 (Average at Idle)

Discrete Graphics
Power Plan: Maximum Battery Life
Wattage: 9.87 (Lowest at Idle), 10.52 (Average at Idle)

Not the most scientific, just sitting here watching the values before the screen turned off. The hard drive spinning up and down did skew the numbers, so I tossed them out. Also I minimized all applications (including browser, which made a big difference since it was mainly a white/gray display which eats up power).

Config:
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo processor P8700 (2.53GHz 1066MHz 3MBL2)
Operating system Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
Display type 14.1 WXGA+ TFT, w/ LED Backlight
System graphics ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 with 256MB
Total memory 4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
Keyboard Keyboard US English
Pointing device UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad)
Hard drive 320 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Optical device DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim (Serial ATA)
System expansion slots Express Card Slot & 7-1 Media Card Reader
Wireless card ThinkPad WiFi (BGN)
Battery60 4 cell Li-Ion Battery

[T400plus]

Err..,What did you disable and how did you do it(Please) to get these wonderful figures.
I want to try the stunt with my T400, wxga+,9 cell,poor mans lcd,low memory(only 2 GB(1+1).

[Guz]

I haven't disabled anything. This is factory installed Win7 (I haven't done any Lenovo updates BTW - Lazy). I have done all the O/S updates.

All I did, was in the ThinkVantage Power Manager set it to "Maximum Battery Life", close every other application and sit and watch the Battery details till the screen blacked out (really boring actually).

Then I changed the graphics cards setting, and repeated the process.

Oh, I did have to bump up the screen brightness a bit. Otherwise I really couldn't read the display.

I wonder if this is a feature of Lenovo's "Enhanced Experience" tweaks?

Ok, I take it back. I did go through the "Rescue & Recovery" a couple of times to bring it back to "factory" in the beginning. I wanted to make sure that worked and I knew how, before copying my data to the laptop. Instead of later on when I really needed it and only to find out it doesn't work.

[ryan1212]

I believe their is a bug in the switchable graphics drivers. When I boot my computer, at idle I use between 7-9 watts. If I put it asleep, wake it up it uses 12-15 watts at idle. Some power management is not loading properly after the computer wakes from sleep. and my suspicion is the switchable graphics software.

Has anyone else experienced this, and where can I report this to lenovo?

edit: Found the answer, there is a bug in their switchable graphics driver afterall.......

http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/Windows-7-Di ... BC87A58568