m9700 "on battery" gaming performance...

Hello willy,

This is my first post on these boards but I'll share my experience. I got my m9700 last weekend and I was going on a trip. So, I got it charged up and decided to play HL2 in the car. Well, I had the settings on max and resolution at 1440 x 900 and it ran horribly. I was getting maybe 20 fps when i wasn't moving and when I started to run or something it would drop to lower. This was the first time that I had played a game and I started to get worried that something was wrong with it. So I turned it off and when I got to a wall outlet, I plugged it in and now it ran perfect with all settings on max.

I've learned that using the laptop for gaming on battery isnt a good idea. I'm not sure if one of the gpu's is turned off when not plugged into a wall or something to do with the processor speed but it runs terrible without a wall plugged in.

You're not the only one with the problem.

-Rob

OMG I'm not alone in the world!! Other people are concerned about gaming or 3d graphic performance on battery too!
Ok, little background. The main reason I got rid of the aurora m7700 is this system cannot run on batt. The mobo auto downclocks the processor, not amd cnq. There is no fix for that btw, it supposed to do such.

As for the m9700, its better, but not prefect. These are my findings so far.

Even with amd power now disabled from windows, its still enabled for max heat reasons. Amd power now will lower the fbs if a) the processor gets to hot. Or b) if the cpu spikes and high heat is enement*spelling*

Now, some games are more cpu intensive then others so this will vary but ill use a common game.

When playing wow you should get 60fps just about anywhere. But unplug your system and the fps drops to 1 or 2 fps!

Reason is, amd power now drastically lowers the cpu fps, your processor drops t a 800Mhz.

It does this because, to save battery power, the m9700 shutdown the cpu fan, or lowers its rpm. Regardless, amd power now reads this as a spike in heat, and drops the fps.

Problem is, power now is wrong! And the system can handle it. The cpu fans will kick back in when the cpu gets too hot on batt, but power now drops the fps, this lowers the cpu temp, and the fans never get a chance to kick in.

The fix: according to amd, you would need to either set cpu fans to always on (no such option) or disable power now in the BIOS (again, no such option)

I have a working ticket with AW on this, we need a BIOS update. AW had their own custom bios flashed for the m9700 and I bet they just removed this option by request.

The workaround: don't give your cpu a high load on batt.
The best way I found to do this is with the power options in nvidia control.
For wow, if you set it to ''max battery'' the cpu load is much less, but... It will drop your fps from 60 to 20. 20fps is barely playable but at least ''playable'' unlike the 1 fps it drops to when on max performance or balanced.
Wow is pretty cpu intensive, so we are kind of screwed.

On other games I an set it to balanced, and I get no reduction in fps when on battery power, and the cpu stays cool enough.

What we need is either a tool to control the cpu fan, or the ability to completely control power now.

If you guys find something before me, let me know. Currently I'm hooked on an old mmo called ffxi and everything runs fine on batt with balanced vid card settings so I haven't really persuade this much (yet)

Also, you can lower your graphic performance and quality settings, set it it max performance vice max quality, but you would need to change that back when you plug in (pain) I run around the house all the time with my 9700, unplugged and plugged all the time.

I will keep ypu updated on any fixes.

I think once we find some fan control software we'll be ok.

I disagree with the statement that we can't get all the power when on batt. I have a company notebook /w intel procesor. I shut speed step off, and it's just like running on power.

it just shortens batt life.

that's the option I need, hell, the m9700 has a woping 12cell batt for a reason...

They eventually came out with a bios fix for the 7700 line to allow fans on full all the time, hopefully they will do that with the m9700.

Thanks for doing all this groundwork marker01...

I wonder if anyone with an Evesham can tell us if they have a bios with these options?

I'm not expiriencing this. We had some nasty storms last night, and me being paraniod, I unplugged my 9700, and ran it on wireless. I know that this chews up the battery pretty fast, but hey I was in the middle of something and I did not want to stop at the moment. I was running WoW at max quality and resolution, and when it was on battery and wireless, I did not notice a difference... It may just be me, but my night elf was running around happily rampaging through the forest. But yes, I have noticed with other games, that on battery, it's really choppy and it just cannot handle it as well when not plugged in.

Obsidian, honestly with WoW, if you're not running the FPS monitor (CTRL-R), 20 FPS won't feel much different. If it was running at 60 before power was unplugged and 20 afterward, you probably didn't notice the change unless you went to IF or SW.

Just a question, but do you all have your m9700s set to disable one graphics card on battery? Also, do you have the power mode set to "always on" b/c if you don't it will start to underclock the turion to save power. I imagine there is a way to "force" the 9700 into keeping the turion clocked up (power setting always on) and keep both GPUs online during battery. I'm just interested to see how long the battery life will be if you do this.

agree. the default power setting for you vid card on battery is max battery, with this set, it normally drops to 20fps and the cpu will not bog down. you may not notice it running in the forest, but don't even think about rinning MC on batt... like he said, try pressing ctrl+ r to monitor your fps on batt and you should see this change. if not, please let us know =)

agree. the default power setting for you vid card on battery is max battery, with this set, it normally drops to 20fps and the cpu will not bog down. you may not notice it running in the forest, but don't even think about rinning MC on batt... like he said, try pressing ctrl+ r to monitor your fps on batt and you should see this change. if not, please let us know =)

yes, tried all the basic stuff. even with the power scheme set to always on, it bogs the peocessor.

there is no such option on this maching to run on one gpu while on battery. you would have to disable the second gpu through nvidia control panel. the mALX has hardware built in that automatically changes to 1 gpu when on battery, but not the m9700,

thanks for the clarification marker

anyone see if the new BIOS released fixes this?
i downloaded it last night but realized I had no more CD-R’s and it did not like my DVD-R…
Had 3 beers by that point so wasn’t going out to buy any, I’ll be trying tonight, jw if anyone else has already tried

i havent try the new BIOS to see this issue, i do however have a program running named Notebook hardware control http://www.pbus-167.com/

this allows you to change some more advance settings, like for example insteand of 800 you can make the CPU run at 1.5!!! thats almost twice so gaming on battery its improved, as well as video card performance since the fans will alwasy be running, of course your battery life will drop like a stripper bra on happy hour

wow thats great Isaac! did you check how its uping the speed? i would hope it just changes the FBS and not the external multiplyer. regardless i'm going to give it a shoot.