Battery Life on Laptops?

[RockGuitarDude]

Ok, so you have these 3 lines to choose from...
Pentium 4
Centrino
AMD 64

I know the battery life with a P4 laptop is abysmal but what is considered abysmal?
What's the battery life like on a Centrino or an Athlon 64?

How much does the clock actually effect the battery life? (aka does a 1.5 Centrino get better life than a 2.0?)
Do all these chips lower the clock when it isn't in use like the XP mobiles?

 

[lockmac]

Centrino are by far the best to choose from for a laptop. They have battery lifes exceeding 5 hours, and still are great in performance. The range in which the speeds that you can get for a centrino are usually around 1.4-1.7 Ghz. Battery life with Pentium 4 are really bad, as they are most of the time a desktop CPU slapped into a motherboard, with no care for the battery life. They are performance laptops, but not many people use their laptop for extreme applications. Battery life on an Athlon 64 would probably be between the Pentium 4 and the Centrino

 

[hopejr]

I used to battle to get 2 hours out of my old P4-M 2.2GHz laptop.

 

[RockGuitarDude]

a centrino gets 5 hours?!

 

[Moe Madness]

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
a centrino gets 5 hours?!

Yes. My old Toshiba would get 6. My X40 with extra battery can pull 8 hours.

 

[RockGuitarDude]

how does a Centrino 2.0GHz compare to a P4 and AMD A64 in performance?

 

[RockGuitarDude]

?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
how does a Centrino 2.0GHz compare to a P4 and AMD A64 in performance?

Very well.

Want benchmarks? Click the "mobile" tab at the top of the page.

For anything except maybe gaming a 1.5 - 1.6 is more than fast enough.

 

[RockGuitarDude]

do they lower their speed to save power or not?

 

[SrGuapo]

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
do they lower their speed to save power or not?

Yup, all mobile (and most desktop) CPUs will scale down the CPU when they are idling or overheating. For anything except gaming, a P-M is a great choice. It is fairly fast, pretty cheap, and has a great battery life. I am going to be getting a lappy before I go off to college and this is what I will probably get.

 

[edelbrock]

The processor will also affect the weight of the laptop via the capacity of the battery. Put a heavy higher capacity battery designed for a P4 in a centrino notebook and I bet the battery life would be amazing. But it would take away the advantage that the Pentium M and centrino line was designed for - low weight. A P4 will require a higher capacity and therefore heavier battery.

 

[rpeAMP]

Originally posted by: SrGuapo

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
do they lower their speed to save power or not?

Yup, all mobile (and most desktop) CPUs will scale down the CPU when they are idling or overheating. For anything except gaming, a P-M is a great choice. It is fairly fast, pretty cheap, and has a great battery life. I am going to be getting a lappy before I go off to college and this is what I will probably get.

I actually have great gaming performance. Maybe not as good as some desktops or higher-powered laptops, but my Centrino 1.4 does awesome in HL2, etc., coupled with my ATI 9600 128MB gfx card.

 

[RockGuitarDude]

Yeah, I'm not too worried about gaming performance... FWIW, I ran HL2 with an AMD A64 2800+, 1 gig of ram, and a GeForce 4 MX440, at 1280x1024, perfectly smooth... no lagging whatsoever... so I'm sure these centrinos can hold up...

 

[saltedeggman]

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
Yeah, I'm not too worried about gaming performance... FWIW, I ran HL2 with an AMD A64 2800+, 1 gig of ram, and a GeForce 4 MX440, at 1280x1024, perfectly smooth... no lagging whatsoever... so I'm sure these centrinos can hold up...

HL2 with MX440 ran smooth at 1280x1024?

what other video setting do you have?

 

[RockGuitarDude]

everything maxed... I don't know how... but I'm not gonna complain...

 

[Sc4freak]

The MX440 is only DirectX7. Therefore when running HL2 the graphics will be very bad, but it should be able to reach at least 60fps @ 1280x1024, most likely with highest detail too.

 

[vegetation]

The processor is only one part of the equation. You need to know the battery capacity (watt-hour) as an important factor, and also screen size (larger=bigger light bulb) is important. There's some Pentium-M's that get only 2 hours of battery life but that's cause they have tiny batteries; extended batteries will easily double that run-time. Likewise, there are a few P4 based laptops that can get 4 hours on a charge but they tend to be huge 'muthers.