Alienware Area-51 m9750: Power Gaming on the Go
by Jarred Walton on August 24, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Battery Life
As mentioned earlier, we had some difficulty getting a clean install of Windows XP onto the m9750, so we had to skip the BAPCo benchmarks, including MobileMark 2005. Obviously, we don't expect a lot in terms of battery life for this particular notebook, but we were curious to see exactly how fast we could run the battery dead. We turned to the battery scripts that we developed for Windows Vista along with our gaming battery benchmark where we loop 3DMark06. Let's see how the Area-51 manages to run without its tether.
Despite having a rather large 12-cell battery, best case the m9750 provides just over an hour of battery life. That's with all of the power saving features turned on. Gaming performance can't even make it up to one hour, but it's also important to mention that NVIDIA's PowerMizer settings are in effect, reducing the GPU clock speeds and most likely disabling (or at least tampering) SLI performance. We did try to run 3DMark06 with PowerMizer disabled, but the laptop would shut down after a few minutes and it appears that clock speeds were still reduced. Not surprisingly, the only conclusion is that battery life certainly isn't a priority with the m9750.
Power Consumption
Related to the battery life discussions, we also have power results. To measure power requirements, we remove the battery from the laptop and measure system power draw at the wall outlet using a Kill-A-Watt device. We test several different scenarios to try to isolate the power draw of the various components. First, we have the baseline measurement when the system is idle and sitting at the desktop. No applications are running for 10 minutes or more but the screensaver and hard drive sleep mode are disabled. As a CPU load test, we run the SMP version of Folding@Home at 100%. Finally, for maximum power load we leave Folding@Home running and start 3DMark05. In this way, we can see roughly how much power the GPU is using in 3D mode versus 2D mode.
The power requirements are off the hizzy indeed! At maximum load, the m9750 consumes twice as much power as the nearest competitor. The 100% CPU test load however shows that the graphics cards are a major factor, as the m9750 "only" requires 45-75% more power under those situations. The good news is that even with such high power requirements, the large power brick is able to provide enough power that you can start gaming with a dead battery and still charge the battery. Then again, do you really need a battery for this type of notebook?
Temperatures
Given the amount of power that the m9750 can use, it's no surprise that the bottom can get pretty hot. While we tend to use the terms "laptop" and "notebook" interchangeably, the m9750 is definitely more at home sitting on the desk rather than in your lap - though it might come in handy during the winter months.
Here's another shot of the bottom of the notebook with temperatures superimposed (the rear of the notebook is at top and the front is at the bottom). Temperatures were measured after playing a game for 30 minutes. At idle, the laptop is cooler, but much of the bottom still gets above 35°C.
At the back of the notebook, the right exhaust port reaches 60°C at full load, and the left (center) exhaust reaches 55°C. Despite all that heat, however, the keyboard and palm rest remain generally cool. The palm rest stays a pretty consistent 31°C over the entire surface. The keyboard is a bit warmer, ranging from 33 to 36°C.
As mentioned earlier, we had some difficulty getting a clean install of Windows XP onto the m9750, so we had to skip the BAPCo benchmarks, including MobileMark 2005. Obviously, we don't expect a lot in terms of battery life for this particular notebook, but we were curious to see exactly how fast we could run the battery dead. We turned to the battery scripts that we developed for Windows Vista along with our gaming battery benchmark where we loop 3DMark06. Let's see how the Area-51 manages to run without its tether.
Despite having a rather large 12-cell battery, best case the m9750 provides just over an hour of battery life. That's with all of the power saving features turned on. Gaming performance can't even make it up to one hour, but it's also important to mention that NVIDIA's PowerMizer settings are in effect, reducing the GPU clock speeds and most likely disabling (or at least tampering) SLI performance. We did try to run 3DMark06 with PowerMizer disabled, but the laptop would shut down after a few minutes and it appears that clock speeds were still reduced. Not surprisingly, the only conclusion is that battery life certainly isn't a priority with the m9750.
Power Consumption
Related to the battery life discussions, we also have power results. To measure power requirements, we remove the battery from the laptop and measure system power draw at the wall outlet using a Kill-A-Watt device. We test several different scenarios to try to isolate the power draw of the various components. First, we have the baseline measurement when the system is idle and sitting at the desktop. No applications are running for 10 minutes or more but the screensaver and hard drive sleep mode are disabled. As a CPU load test, we run the SMP version of Folding@Home at 100%. Finally, for maximum power load we leave Folding@Home running and start 3DMark05. In this way, we can see roughly how much power the GPU is using in 3D mode versus 2D mode.
The power requirements are off the hizzy indeed! At maximum load, the m9750 consumes twice as much power as the nearest competitor. The 100% CPU test load however shows that the graphics cards are a major factor, as the m9750 "only" requires 45-75% more power under those situations. The good news is that even with such high power requirements, the large power brick is able to provide enough power that you can start gaming with a dead battery and still charge the battery. Then again, do you really need a battery for this type of notebook?
Temperatures
Given the amount of power that the m9750 can use, it's no surprise that the bottom can get pretty hot. While we tend to use the terms "laptop" and "notebook" interchangeably, the m9750 is definitely more at home sitting on the desk rather than in your lap - though it might come in handy during the winter months.
Here's another shot of the bottom of the notebook with temperatures superimposed (the rear of the notebook is at top and the front is at the bottom). Temperatures were measured after playing a game for 30 minutes. At idle, the laptop is cooler, but much of the bottom still gets above 35°C.
At the back of the notebook, the right exhaust port reaches 60°C at full load, and the left (center) exhaust reaches 55°C. Despite all that heat, however, the keyboard and palm rest remain generally cool. The palm rest stays a pretty consistent 31°C over the entire surface. The keyboard is a bit warmer, ranging from 33 to 36°C.
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Guspaz - Saturday, September 1, 2007 - link
Anybody considering buying a gaming notebook should refuse to purchase one until nVidia gets their act together and starts releasing notebook drivers with regularity.I myself am a notebook gamer, with a modest Dell Inspiron 9400, Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz, and aGeForce Go 7900gs. I run Vista.
Well, nVidia currently DOES NOT OFFER Vista notebook drivers at all. Not a one, nada. Your only options are to either use Dell's driver, which is an ancient beta missing support for most features of the GPU, or a hacked desktop driver (which still is missing many features under Vista, and lacks PowerMizer support).
Under XP, the situation isn't much better. nVidia's latest notebook drivers for XP are 84.63, released over a year ago on July 5, 2006.
Your notebook manufacturer MIGHT provide newer drivers, if you're LUCKY. For Dell's part, their XP drivers are still ancient and stuck in the 90 series, and they only ever released ONE driver for Vista, probably thinking "Well, they have drivers now, that's good enough."
In order to play BioShock on a notebook, you have NO other option but to hack the desktop drivers.
This is NOT an acceptable situation. As notebook gamers, we should REQUIRE nVidia to SUPPORT THEIR PRODUCT and release regular updates for their cards. The fact that their desktop drivers work so well on notebooks with a simple INF tweak should show you how EASY it would be for them to release official notebook drivers. They give us this bullshit story about how driver updates need to come from the notebook manufacturers due to differences between notebooks. This is bullshit. I don't get my desktop graphics drivers from Abit because they happen to have made the motherboard.
So what do I plan to do? I have no choice. I'll keep using hacked desktop drivers for lack of ANY other option.
monitorjbl - Saturday, August 25, 2007 - link
Yay, a William Gibson reference!
JarredWalton - Saturday, August 25, 2007 - link
Bonus points if you actually played the old Neuromancer game by Interplay. Cue Devo...Some
Things
Ne-ver
Change
....
:)
strafejumper - Friday, August 24, 2007 - link
i never understood the concept of all these laptops such as this alienwarethe idea of a laptop to me is it is portable
however if the battery only last 60 mins it is not really that portable
for $5000 i would want to be able to for example watch a dvd
however this cannot even do that seemingly simple task!
battery life to me is so much more useful than the extra cpu and gpu cycles
when watching a dvd, browsing the internet, playing cards, backgammon, chess or other simple games, listening to music, typing documents, emailing, messengering etc. etc. the extra horsepower of the cpu and gpu are not even being used.
battery life > some extra frames in the latest game (which is better on a desktop probably anyway with bigger screen, full keyboard + mouse, desk, speakers, etc.)
Inkjammer - Saturday, August 25, 2007 - link
I am one of the people who have bought, buy and will buy workstations like these. People like me don't buy them as a "laptop" but as a "portable desktop replacement" (DTR).Some of the justifications:
Lugging an entire system to LAN parties can be frustrating, especially since I have a 24" monitor, large keyboard. I'm also using a Coolermaster 830 CM Stacker case, which weighs a ton, and breaking it down, setting it up can take far, far too long.
I also tend to take my DTR notebooks systems with me to work, where I can game during nightshifts. I'm also stationed overseas, so being able to easily transport a FULL system, even if contains in a laptop, is invaluable. I also do high end art and 3D animation, and need the additional power for job and hobby.
The tradeoff for portability and battery life on a notebook is fairly steep, but there's not much in the way of compromise.
And yes, I have a second laptop for my "on the go" needs.
yyrkoon - Friday, August 24, 2007 - link
Some people do not have room for a desktop(or a desk), and use nothing but laptops. Others may travel, staying in hotels nightly, having a plug available, but do not want to tote around a desktop with them. Other people like truckers may be able to use an AC inverter for power, but have limited room in their sleepers for a computer.Having said that, I have been a trucker, and kept a full sized desktop in my sleeper, and I have also worked over the road, staying in a hotel nightly, and used a desktop during this time as well. Not everyone is like me however, and some of these people may preffer something smaller, and easier to carry around, or maybe just smaller to maximize their given 'alotted space' where ever they may be. I wouldnt buy one though . . .
wolfman3k5 - Saturday, August 25, 2007 - link
Well, how about there east bound, you got your ears on? I totally know what you mean, how ever I never had time for gaming. Battery life was always more important to me. I'm also an ex trucker, God, it's a lonely job. Anyway, just wanted to say hi:)yyrkoon - Monday, August 27, 2007 - link
Myself, for 2 years(and around 200k miles) I would typically drive 8HRs/day, 2-3 months at a time. Plenty of down time, and plenty of time to game, even in the early to mid 90's ;) Of course back then, there was nothing like this availible, and I was probably one of the first drivers to have a full blown desktop in their cab(IMB compatable 386SX-25 with 4 MB of ram YEEE HAAW!) lol . . .yyrkoon - Monday, August 27, 2007 - link
IBM compatable . . .JarredWalton - Monday, August 27, 2007 - link
IBM compatible you mean? :)