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9100/MR9800 major video perf problem on battery

post #1 of 13
10/31/04 at 12:15pm
Thread Starter 
I've tried everything obvious to maintain performance while on battery, as this is not a DTR for me, and I don't care about battery life (much).

I've tried diabling Powerplay and leaving it enabled with its settings maxed. I've installed and uninstalled SpeedswitchXP (even though I know it really isn't supposed to do anything with a desktop P4). I've tried making sure that my battery is charged >90%.

But, no matter what I do, I lose about 10,000 points in 3Dmark2001SE when on battery power. If I can't correct this, my 9100 is going straight back, which would be a shame.

Any suggestions?
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post #2 of 13
10/31/04 at 1:15pm
How much heavy gaming are you going to be doing on battery? Esp. considering that, if you're pushing the 3D, you'll probably only be able to play about 40 minutes....
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post #3 of 13
10/31/04 at 1:19pm
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=725

You need to download ATItool from that link. Once you install it then go into it while on battery power. The 9100/XPS turns the gpu clock way down when on battery. All you have to do is bump it back up to 350/300 while on battery and you should be fine. Be sure to make a profile so that you can just click the profile and the Load button whenever you start playing a video game. That way you won't be running it at full speed and your battery will last a little longer.
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post #4 of 13
10/31/04 at 2:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
How much heavy gaming are you going to be doing on battery?
Like I said, this is not a DTR for me. It is a pure entertainment machine while I'm on long train commutes, etc.


Quote:
The 9100/XPS turns the gpu clock way down when on battery.
I thought it was powerplay that does that. Also, Radlinker reports full GPU/MEM speed when Powerplay is off. I tried the AtiTool, but I can't say that anything I saw helped at all. The clocks reported by AtiTool mirror what Radlinker was already showing, but my 3DMark2001SE scores are the same: 9-10,000 below the scores I get with AC. The clocks don't seem to be the issue unless they are being changed by the system only when 3D apps are started.

I also note that since I installed AtiTool, 3DMark2001SE will no longer run. 3DMark03 is fine, but reveals the same problem.
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post #5 of 13
10/31/04 at 4:45pm
wait, you didnt buy the 9100 for a DTR?
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post #6 of 13
10/31/04 at 6:37pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
wait, you didnt buy the 9100 for a DTR?
Once again, no I did not. I don't care about battery life as long as I get about an hour at a time, since that is how long I am on the train each day during my commute.

Any helpful advise before this thing goes back?
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post #7 of 13
11/1/04 at 3:32pm
Thread Starter 
TTT

I have to think that this topic would be of utmost importance to people who are considering buying/using one of these machines for entertainment and/or gaming. The inability to play games at full speed while on battery power utterly eliminates the mobility of this machine for lot of people.

If it can't be fixed, that's fine, and I'll just give up the idea of a gaming laptop, but I'd rather fine a workaround.
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post #8 of 13
11/1/04 at 6:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cherub
Once again, no I did not. I don't care about battery life as long as I get about an hour at a time, since that is how long I am on the train each day during my commute.

Any helpful advise before this thing goes back?
So your just using it to run 3dmark on while riding the train? Have you checked your fps while on battery? I don't see how you can be having a problem with it if your gpu/mem clock is the same as it is when it's on AC. I'm going to run a 3dmark03 right now with mine on battery and see what I get. I'll update in a few minutes.
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post #9 of 13
11/1/04 at 6:21pm
Okay I just ran 3dmark03 on battery power with maximum battery and powerplay Enabled, with my gpu/mem set to stock and I came up with a score of 5586. I'd like to see any other notebook out there at the moment come up with a 5586 plugged in. I'm going to set everything to max performance and powerplay disabled and see what it comes up with.

And with powerplay off and everything maxxed I only increased my 3dmark03 score by about 150. It ended up being 5721.
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post #10 of 13
11/1/04 at 8:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cherub
Once again, no I did not. I don't care about battery life as long as I get about an hour at a time, since that is how long I am on the train each day during my commute.
I am having the same problem! Like this fellow here, I bought it so that I could game remotely (even if for 30 mins, i don't care i'll just keep switching batteries, i have more ).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Myhre
Have you checked your fps while on battery? I don't see how you can be having a problem with it if your gpu/mem clock is the same as it is when it's on AC.
Yeah, strange thing isn't it? But I'm having the same problem. If you ask me benchmark FPS don't mean shet. All you have to do to see this problem is go download the new Need for Speed Underground 2 demo (full game not out yet) and set it on high settings. Play the game for a bit, while in the game pull your AC plug out, it goes TERRIBLY chopping, then plug it back in. You will see it no doubt loses a great deal of performance when unplugged. I have disabled powerplay and tried everything. Perhaps this fellow and I just have defective machines but I can make a MPG showing this flaw proving it exists.

I've reformatted my 9100 with a fresh XP pro install running the latest omega drivers and I can't see why it would do this. I felt I had to reply to this since no one yet has addressed this issue and I've been working with computers for over 15 years - even this dumbfounds me. In my experience, tech support of any kind is useless unless you need to RMA something so I haven't even attempted to contact Dell about this.

Anyone else care to chime in on this subject?!
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post #11 of 13
11/1/04 at 9:57pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
So your just using it to run 3dmark on while riding the train?
I couldn't care less about 3DMark per se, but it is a useful test for comparing the same machine in different performance states. While I don't put much faith in it as an estimation of real performance, I do know that an unexplained 10,000 point drop demonstrates a real problem. Clearly, your system does not have this problem, yet g00bz' system does. The question is: what is the difference?

BTW, I reformatted my system with WinXP Home immediately. On AC I get about 6389 in 3DMark03. It drops to half that on battery, even with Powerplay disabled. Also, I'm using the newest Omega drivers.
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post #12 of 13
11/2/04 at 8:37pm
If anybody wants to switch their 9800 for a 9700 128 (yes I will put cash in between) send me a mail at admin@thedyinggrounds.com but plz... check to see if there's a solution first, I am not trying to rip anybody off here.
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post #13 of 13
11/2/04 at 10:28pm
Thread Starter 
Well, I have determined that it is NOT the video card. I tried running SiSoft Sandra CPU tests on and off A/C, and the scores on battery were less than 1/2 those while on A/C. The scary thing is that the desktop CPU has no Speedstep features.

Any ideas on what may be affecting the CPU? CPU-z reports full CPU and bus speeds.

(I have also determined that the memory and cache are not at issue and no processes are causing this problem.)

This thing is set to go back. If this in an anomoly, I'll try to fix it, but no help so far. Tech support can only repeat my question back to me six or seven times.
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