Gateway NV52 (AMD) - Battery Life
We'll start with AMD's mobile platform, which we have already dissected in previous reviews. Here's the quick rundown of specifications, and as much as possible we updated all applications, drivers, and OS components to the latest versions. The ATI drivers for Windows XP and Windows Vista are slightly older than the Windows 7 drivers, but unfortunately we are not able to install "reference drivers" on ATI-based laptops for Vista or XP. Thanks OEMs!
| Gateway NV5214u Test System | |
| Processor | AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64 (Dual-core, 2.1GHz, 2x512KB L2, 65nm, 35W, 667MHz FSB) |
| Memory | 2x2048MB Hyundai PC2-5300 @ DDR2-667 5-5-5-15 (Hyundai Electronics HMP125SEFR8C-Y5) |
| Graphics | Integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 Driver version Cat 8.582-090203a (Feb 03, 2009) 40 (8 x 5) Shaders at 500 MHz |
| Display | 15.6" Glossy WXGA (1366x768) AU Optronics B156XW02 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate Momentus 5400.6 320GB 5400RPM 8MB (ST932032 0AS) |
| Optical Drive | 8x DVDRW (LG Electronics GT20N) |
| Battery | 6-Cell 10.8V, 4400mAhr, 47.5Whr |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit |
| Price | NV5214u available at Best Buy for $500 |
We are comparing performance and battery life on a single system, so system specifications don't necessarily matter. This is an apples-to-apples comparison between several different operating systems using the same hardware. Here are the results.
So we have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Windows 7 definitely shows some battery life improvements relative to Windows Vista. The bad news? We're still awaiting the official launch of Windows 7… and then we need to start from scratch with battery life testing on future laptops, since as we don't want to compare apples and oranges.
Using the Balanced profile, Windows 7 ends up providing 11% more battery life than Windows Vista. When we switch to the Power Saver profile, the margin of victory shrinks to 5%. The wildcard in these tests is Windows XP, which delivered the best battery life using its Portable/Laptop profile (by 2% over Win7, so it's almost a tie). However, it also achieved the worst battery life using the Max Battery profile (Win7 wins by 6%).
The margin of error between runs is around 3%, but we try to run each test multiple times and take the best result… unfortunately, when you have one laptop and about 30 battery tests to run on it, each requiring around four hours (with recharge time), repeating each test is a bit too much to ask for. Case in point, the Gateway NV52 originally had a score of 175 minutes on one run with the Power Saver profile, which seemed too high; rerunning the test three times showed that there must have been some other factor involved (i.e. perhaps a Flash ad server was temporarily down). Feel free to take the figures with a grain of salt, and we have some additional data later to verify the standings.
Clearly, power profiles are making a big difference depending on the operating system. Windows XP saw the least benefit, improving just 4.5% by using the power saving profile. Windows 7 comes in second, with an improvement of 13%. Then we have Windows Vista, which delivers an astounding 20% improvement in battery life just by switching the power profile.
Ubuntu is a little bit more difficult to assess, but clearly Ubuntu doesn't come anywhere near matching Windows. Using the power saver profile and Firefox, Windows Vista beats Ubuntu by 38%. Even if we factor in the power profile (Ubuntu doesn't appear to have a way to manage power profiles like Windows), that would still be a difference of around 15% in favor of Vista. Flash is extremely sluggish on Linux, however, and the margin of victory decreases when we use the FlashBlock add-on. At that point, Windows Vista only wins by 19%, which we could attribute to the power profile. That's still a significant difference in battery life, and we're using the worst of the Windows OS options for comparison. We didn't have time to test with other operating systems using Firefox or FlashBlock, largely due to the amount of time we spent trying to get Ubuntu to work properly in the DVD playback results.
The DVD playback results are completely different from the Internet battery life results, with the power profile having virtually no effect on battery life. The three Windows versions had the same score, within one minute, using each profile, so using the Power Saver profile is clearly no panacea. On the other hand, there are definite differences between the three Windows OSes. Ubuntu crashed repeatedly during DVD playback, sometimes to the point where we needed a hard reboot. Changing to the open-source MESA drivers fixed the situation with DVD playback, but under that test scenario Ubuntu manages a rather unimpressive result. It looks like ATI's drivers would last just over two hours with Ubuntu in DVD playback, so they definitely do better in terms of power optimizations. Looking at the Internet battery life with the open-source MESA drivers, there's clearly a lack of power optimizations (despite enabling dynamic clocks in the xorg.conf file).
Overall, Windows 7 appears to improve battery life for DVD playback by over 20% relative to Windows Vista, but the improvement is only about 6% relative to Windows XP. The story for Internet surfing is far more confusing. If you use the Balanced power profile, Windows XP beats Windows Vista by 13% and just edges out Windows 7 by 2%, making it the best option. Turn to the Power Saver profile and Windows 7 is the leader, 6% ahead of XP and 5% ahead of Windows Vista. Ubuntu isn't even in the running, with Vista offering up to 37% more battery life using Firefox; blocking Flash elements does help Ubuntu, but it also helps Windows and the gap shrinks to only 19%. Makes you wonder if Flash content is actually worth having, doesn't it?
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orionmgomg - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
You are right - I did shouldn't have been so brass on saying who cares - it is a very well written artical and I am sure you spent a lot of time puttinmg together very accurate data for the people who actually do care.Sorry for being thoughtless to say the least.
I always love anandtech and I love all the articals and the diversity of reviews and studies.
I just had a knee reaction to this because every time I buy a lappy - and test the battery for the first time, I realize - yes battery performance gets better and better - even though ever so slightly, but I also realize with great frustration that you really can not rely on battery power for the most part - it will get you out of a jam for sure - but to base any computing time on battery power is futile - that has been my expreiance and so I made those comments more out of my own frustration than anything...
Thank you for all the hard work, good articals and being the very best tech web site!
Fox5 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Ubuntu may be released on a 6 month time frame, but by the time a version comes out, the software in it is 6 months out of date. Since Linux is finally getting some real development attention, it's advancing very quickly, and being 6 months to a year out of date represents a large change in features.Hold off on any future Ubuntu comparisons until Ubuntu 9.10 (fresh install only). It switches to the ext4 file system which fixes some firefox performance issues and should decrease boot times as well and should have more up to date drivers. It's also the next long-term release I believe, which is kind of scary considering how much new stuff they're adopting in that version.
I'm surprised you couldn't get the latest ATI proprietary driver installed though. I've used both ATI and nvidia cards in linux, and ati by far had the easier install process. If I recall, it was as simple as sudo ./atiinstaller and then hitting enter a few times. Then again, I've also heard ati integrated chipsets have horrible driver support under linux, so they may not be supported, though I'd think the hd3200 igp would be since it's still fairly recent.
The intel drivers may also get a big boost in ubuntu 9.10. There's some new video driver (or just 3d?) framework being introduced and the older Intel drivers have all but been abandoned to work on the new framework, so a lot of issues that need fixing aren't even being considered for the current drivers in use.
themissinglint - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
This reads like you guys don't know your way around GNU Linux systems well enough to get what you could out of them. It reads like you did the minimum to get it running, which is, from a perspective, fair, since that was probably more work than you put into the Windows OSs.It's also a small sample because you're only using one/two set ups. Laptops like these are optimized up and down for Windows. Of course that is also true for most computers people buy.
Overall, I am glad to see Ubuntu included at all-- it's usually absent from these sorts of tests. The more you include it, the more experience AnandTech will have running Ubuntu (and other Linux systems), and the more you'll be able to get from it. Also, Ubuntu in particular is quickly becoming more out-of-the-box (as more and more people contribute to development on more and more machines). In the next couple years you'll be testing Linux systems that will blow Windows away in some places.
But: Kudos on including Ubuntu... where's OS X? Couldn't you get it to run on a Gateway machine?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Not going to try OS X on a hackintosh... at least not yet. As for the ATI drivers, I went through the manual install procedure multiple times and was greeted with a failed driver message. It was so bad that I couldn't even get back to the original Ubuntu ATI fglxr driver and ended up just going back to my previous Ubuntu image. I did it three times following various instructions and it failed each time. :(If someone has specific experience with getting an optimized driver for the HD 3200 working, point me at some instructions. The experience right now unfortunately was horrible. All the DVD playback programs I tried on Ubuntu crashed when using the latest "stable Ubuntu Jaunty" driver package, sometimes after five minutes, sometimes after 60 minutes. If you weren't at the PC when the DVD playback froze up, the system would eventually enter a completely locked up state (a la the lovely BSOD, but with no error message).
I still have the laptops and will test out other options if any of you want to point me to guides that are of reasonable quality. I got just a brief glimpse of what Ryan experienced over the past year with Ubuntu, though, and I didn't want to get sucked in any further. I have plenty of other reviews I need to get done!
smitty3268 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
I think that crash during video playback is fixed by turning off redirected rendering when full screen apps are active (it's an option in Compiz somewhere). Or you could just turn off desktop compositing completely. It seems like the newer drivers have fixed that, but I'm not running fglrx and I don't remember for sure.Fox5 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Agreed, the desktop effects, besides wasting battery life, interfere with the ATI's drivers video acceleration and should have been off during the test.Of course, you could then ask why Ubuntu enables something buggy by default.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
I did disable Visual FX on both systems - is that the same thing? The ATI setup was pretty much a complete no-show with DVD playback before I did that. It would stutter and fail withing seconds. Sorry I didn't mention that.nofumble62 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Intel battery life at least 1 hour longer.AMD boot up time 50% longer.
Those are the two most important things for me.
jodomcfatty - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
If you look at the specs, he's comparing a Intel 4500 graphics chip with an AMD 3200HD(which while integrated, will seriously destroy the 4500 in gaming tests) but that will ALSO completely affect battery life since it can't just be turned down to 4500 usage levels. This thing alone eats up significant battery power while expelling a lot more heat.He did this before and I completely lose respect for him for talking battery life while using totally different setups.
I would agree that equal systems the Intel will most likely be better, but no where near by this much.
This article is more about the OS but even there he knows little about linux but I will say he's willing to do more testing....just seems crazy to me that he couldn't just get a AMD with a 4500(harder to find but not impossible)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
What's a better IGP for AMD than the HD 3200? You're being completely obstinate to suggest that it's not a fair comparison.The fact is, AMD can't do any better power-wise than what I've got in the Gateway, can it? An X1270 IGP is similar in performance to the 4500MHD, and power draw is similar to the HD 3200 (because it's on an older process).
As for finding an AMD setup with a 4500, either you're talking about an AMD HD 4500, which would be even WORSE on power draw than the HD 3200, or you're suggesting it's possible to run an AMD CPU with an Intel chipset. It's not, as HyperTransport isn't an Intel feature and that's what AMD CPUs use.