ASUS UL80Vt and G51J: Going for the Gold
by Jarred Walton on December 15, 2009 1:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Power Requirements
As a corollary to the battery life tests, we also performed measurements of power requirements using the AC adapters and a Kill-A-Watt device. These numbers are only accurate to the nearest Watt, so a difference of 1W (i.e. from rounding) could obscure up to a 12% actual difference in power requirements. Also note that power requirements change when you switch to DC power, and power supply (power brick) efficiency comes into play when using the AC adapter, so the battery life tests are a better indication of true power requirements.
How's that for a nice exponential scale of power requirements? It's sort of fun to see the huge discrepancy in power requirements between desktop replacement notebooks and thin and light laptops. The most interesting aspect of the above graphs for most people will be the various power states of the UL80Vt. It looks like the CPU power requirements from Turbo33 are negligible at idle but can add up to 12W at full load. Meanwhile, the G210M GPU looks like it adds 3W at idle and somewhere around 10W at full load. (We can't be precise since the faster GPU also allows the CPU to work harder, contributing to the overall power draw.)
As a point of reference, we also added battery life while "gaming" (looping 3DMark06 at native LCD resolution). The only difficulty is that the laptops provide different GPU performance levels on battery power; for example, all of the Clevo designs force the GPU into a "limp mode" where it runs at significantly lower performance (around the level of the G210M, actually). The two ASUS laptops we're looking at today both allow you to run at full performance while on battery power, so keep that in mind when you look at the last chart.
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fokka - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - link
you say you adjust the critical battery percentage to 1%. while on a battery test thats perfectly ok, i heard (tomshardware) and painfully experienced that discharging a battery to zero is very bad for the cells.one time vista didnt shut down in time and the battery lost about 20% of its capacity.
however, it would be great, if you guys made a battery guide/test and scientifically research the dos and donts of batteries. these little chemical friends are the cornerstone of our digital and mobile lifestyle, it scares me, how little proven knowledge exists on this topic.
Ditiris - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - link
This is AT. The first thing you should do is a clean install since your readers aren't going to keep all the OEM crapware on the machine.I'd also say to make sure you're using the Advanced settings in both Vista and WIndows 7, and with Windows 7 you need to disable any sleep/wake timers.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - link
All the OEM software (other than useful utilities) gets removed/disabled, but doing a clean install every time has its own set of pitfalls. I try to review laptops as the users will get them, and a clean install every time is a bit much. Regardless, this has happened on clean builds as well, so the bloatware you refer to may aggravate the situation somewhat but it's not the root cause.As for the Advanced settings, obviously I've gone in there when I discuss things such as prompt for password being reset (to "Yes"). The odd thing is that it's only a subset of settings that get reset. The min/max CPU percentages stick, WiFi power settings stick, and so do most of the settings in the "middle" of the advanced power options. It's the first few settings and the last couple that seem to revert on a regular basis. The UL80Vt for example reverts once or twice a day -- one of the worst offenders in my experience.
Diosjenin - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - link
I've had it happen fairly often on both Vista and 7, after perfectly clean installs, with no third-party power software. Do not require password on wake creeps back up every so often, as does do not enter sleep mode on lid close if on AC power, even though I've repeatedly disabled them both.danwat1234 - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link
The Asus G50VT-X6, the predecessor to the G51J is very sexy. Very speedy with a cheap X9100 CPU you can buy on Ebay. Put in an SSD, buy a few extra genuine 9 cell batteries on Ebay and stick them in the fridge so you'll have a good batteries for the next 7+ years and your good.It does run hot but that's ok. It is a part of it's personality. I am waiting until Per core x86 performance of the latest mobile chips are over twice the speed (work done) of my existing laptop. I think I'll wait until 11nm skymont.
In regards to longevity, I've been crunching on the 9800gs video card and the CPU for years and years with Seti@Home nearly 24/7 with no failures. This thing is reliable. I have burnt out quite a few AC adapters though. DC jack is solid. Running at 85-90C on the GPU most of the time and it really doesn't care.
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