Is it my imagination or reducing processor to 1% give a drastic battery life increase?

Bruno Vincent

Estimable
Mar 23, 2015
45
0
4,580
I have an old laptop.

A Toshiba with b950 CPU, nice battery with 4400 mHa

Doing a test now and set maximum processor speed at 1%.

Suddenly battery life is great, but CPU runs at .80 ghz...but you know what? No big deal, I did some testing, and for example, Adobe Illustrator takes 10 seconds to open instead of 3 on full power....big deal!

I'm so happy with renewed battery life that I won't even bother buying a new laptop, it has an SSD and it's plenty fast.

I have a desktop with 16 gigs or RAM and i5-8400, I think I'll just keep using that and keeping old laptop.

Was thinking of selling desktop and getting a new laptop with i5-8250u....but I think I'll stick to new Dektip old laptop combo;)

Any body else see huge battery boost with reducing processor speed? Could I do this with an i7-7700HQ also? Get a powerful laptop and underclock then get very long battery time?




 
Solution

jaslion

Honorable
Dec 17, 2012
529
1
11,210


This is normal but why get a powerfull laptop then if you could just get an atom based solution that will perform the same and be a fraction of the cost of a 7700hq laptop.
 

Bruno Vincent

Estimable
Mar 23, 2015
45
0
4,580

What is atom based solution?


 

jaslion

Honorable
Dec 17, 2012
529
1
11,210


Intels atom series (soon to be called pentium silver for some reason) are their lowest power chips running at a max of 5w. These will at stock speeds easily beat the b950 you have now since it's running at 800 mhz.

Do note that you are losing a huge amount of performance on that laptop with such a low clock and programs like illustrator will start to heavily slow down once something like a yt vid in the background is open or if you are working on a decently complex or large file.
 
Solution