this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
129 points (96.4% liked)

Technology

59331 readers
4641 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

bloatware

Even if you remove all that crap, battery life is nowhere near the same vs the M-series chips. So while it may be a problem, it's still not anywhere close to the reason battery life sucks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Isn't the screen eating most of the power in laptops? I just have an old T490 that I don't use very much so I might be not that well informed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I thought so too, but if Apple is getting more than 2x the battery life vs competitors while having a more dense screen, then I suppose it's not as significant as I had thought.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Denser screen shouldn't use more power though? Lighter, brighter, larger yes, denser IMO not so much.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Denser takes a more powerful gpu and higher data rates to drive more pixels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Oh yeah, the gpu would have to work more.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

It can be if you run linux and throttle the chips. Even my older G14 last a long time, as the AMD SoCs are great, it can run fanless throttled down, and it just has a straight up bigger battery than razor thin Macs.

But again, it's just not configured this way in most laptops, which sacrifice battery for everything else because, well, OEMs are idiots.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Current gen MacBooks have massive batteries. The MacBook Pro 14 inch is 70-73Wh, same as your G14, and the 16 inch MBP is 100Wh, the legal limit to take on an airplane. Even the 13inch air, apple’s thinnest and smallest, is still 52Wh.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What specific driver and linux tools do you use to throttle your CPU?

Also throttling often produces the opposite result in terms of extended battery life as it likely takes more time in the higher states to do the same amount of work whereas running at a faster clock speed, the work is completed faster and the CPU returns to a lower less energy using state quicker and resides there more of the time.

I would be interested to hear your results. Have you done any tests comparing a throttled versus throttled system with the tools you are using?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

On my G14, I just uses the ROG utility to disable turbo and make some kernel tweaks. I've used ryzenadj before, but its been awhile. And yes I measured battery drain in the terminal (but again its been awhile).

Also throttling often produces the opposite result in terms of extended battery life as it likely takes more time in the higher states to do the same amount of work whereas running at a faster clock speed, the work is completed faster and the CPU returns to a lower less energy using state quicker and resides there more of the time.

"Race to sleep" is true to some extent, but after a certain point the extra voltage one needs for higher clocks dramatically outweighs the benefit of the CPU sleeping longer. Modern CPUs turbo to ridiculously inefficient frequencies by default before they thermally throttle themselves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I don't, I just run stock. I run an E495 and get something like 3-5 hours battery life, depending on what I'm doing, and after a few years of ownership, I still get around 3 hours battery life.