Lower performance in battery mode

bigsum

Hi

I bought the Acer predator notebooks a month ago.

It's very excellant system for gaming or deep learning.

I used to it for developing AI program.

Until now, I used it in plug-in mode using AC charger.

Yesterday, I used it in battery mode. The program which I have made was not worked well in battery mode.

And so, I tested the two environments, that is, battery mode and plug-in mode.

In plug-in mode, the AI program which uses the GPU device do the job very fast.

But, in battery mode, it doesn't. It is slower than plug-in mode.

Is there any parameter for controlling power in GPU or graphic card in bios setup mode?

I tried, but I didn't find that.

Please let me know the solution for my problem. Thank you !

Accepted answers

All comments

brummyfan2

Hi,
When you switch to battery mode the power plan changes to Balanced plan, try switching to High Performance plan or custom plan and see whether it helps.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/1c/msbot49tdrxl.jpg

Skree

The GPU doesn't run at full power when on battery power, it's normal and it can't be avoided in any way.

GPUs have fairly high energy requirements, running them at full power on battery alone would overheat the battery and in short cause a whole lot of problems, that's why you see lower performance when running on battery.

If you need a source for what i am saying:

https://www.howtogeek.com/206022/why-are-games-slower-on-battery-power-even-with-a-high-performance-power-plan-selected/

You may find many others.

Anyway, short answer is: it is normal that your GPU is slower when running from battery. Perfectly, absolutely normal. Changing the power plan would have no effect whatsoever. Test it if you want.

sri369

To add to @Skree

Some intensive games pull as much as 20,000-25,000 mW of power when running at full potential (compare this to 5000-6000 mW at idle/low usage). This much power pull is fine in bursts, but at sustained time frames would put severe pressure of battery. This is why power available is limited when on battery.

Red-Sand

The feature that slows down the Nvidia GPU's power when on battery is called "Nvidia Powermizer". It's quite normal for a laptop with a powerful graphics card to have this feature as if your GPU used it's full potential it would drain your battery quite fast.

What you can do if use Geforce Experience's "Optimize" on your games.
It's a feature of geforce experience that sets your graphic settings to what's appropriate for your current power levels.

So unplug your laptop > geforce experience > optimize the game > play

I also suggest enabling "whisper mode" prior to optimizing as it sets a Nvidia recommended FPS cap/graphics to the games it optimizes to further improve performance and battery life.

Warning: Most games will be capped to 40fps with whisper mode activated. (Which I consider playable at least on battery)
If you decide the FPS Nvidia sets is too low you can always go into your Nvidia control panel and find the settings for that particular game & scroll down to the bottom and manually set FPS (up to 120fps)

Skree

I have to add something to what Red-sand said...

Whisper mode works only when the laptop is plugged in, it's a mode to lower noise emissions and temperature while plugged in, it doesn't work while on battery power.

Source: Nvidia itself: https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/whispermode

"NVIDIA WhisperMode

A new ultra efficient mode that makes your [b]plugged-in laptop[/b] run much quieter while gaming. It works by intelligently pacing the game’s frame rate while simultaneously configuring the graphics settings for optimal power-efficiency."