[opensuse] Poor battery life with Opensuse 11.4
Hi, I have a thinkpad e520 that I am running opensuse 11.4 tumbleweed on. While most everything works I notice that the battery life is quite poor under linux compared to windows. I can only get maybe a couple of hours under linux but 4-5 hours under windows. These have dual graphics (intel + AMD Radeon HD 6630M switchable). I have blacklisted the radeon module so that (hopefully) only the inbuilt intel graphics is used. The radeon module is no longer loaded and intel sandybridge is shown as the driver in gnome, but still the battery doesn't last long. I do notice that the fan seems to be constantly on. Is there anything that I can try to improve the battery life or is this just the state of things under linux for this type of laptop Regards Jeff -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 30/08/11 11:43, Jeff Hoare wrote:
Hi,
I have a thinkpad e520 that I am running opensuse 11.4 tumbleweed on. While most everything works I notice that the battery life is quite poor under linux compared to windows. I can only get maybe a couple of hours under linux but 4-5 hours under windows. These have dual graphics (intel + AMD Radeon HD 6630M switchable). I have blacklisted the radeon module so that (hopefully) only the inbuilt intel graphics is used. The radeon module is no longer loaded and intel sandybridge is shown as the driver in gnome, but still the battery doesn't last long. I do notice that the fan seems to be constantly on. Is there anything that I can try to improve the battery life or is this just the state of things under linux for this type of laptop
Regards Jeff
I don't believe switchable graphics support in Linux is that good yet (and certainly only blacklisting the module doesn't ensure the radeon is switched off) ... it is quite likely your radeon is still sucking power. Searching for "vga_switcheroo" might lead you in the right direction for other issues, run "powertop", also investigate "laptop-mode" Regards, Tejas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
If you say tumbleweed, you run a 3.0 kernel which is known to have power regressions: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_mobile_uffda&num=1 Kernel 3.1 is reported to have even more: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_31_power_regress&num=1 I have a clarkdale notebook with Intel graphics and experienced increased heating since switching to a 3.0 kernel. I could improve on this using kernel parameters as described in http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_i915_power&num=1 2011/8/30 Jeff Hoare <jeffhoare@xtra.co.nz>
Hi,
I have a thinkpad e520 that I am running opensuse 11.4 tumbleweed on. While most everything works I notice that the battery life is quite poor under linux compared to windows. I can only get maybe a couple of hours under linux but 4-5 hours under windows. These have dual graphics (intel + AMD Radeon HD 6630M switchable). I have blacklisted the radeon module so that (hopefully) only the inbuilt intel graphics is used. The radeon module is no longer loaded and intel sandybridge is shown as the driver in gnome, but still the battery doesn't last long. I do notice that the fan seems to be constantly on. Is there anything that I can try to improve the battery life or is this just the state of things under linux for this type of laptop
Regards Jeff -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hi, Thanks for the suggestions. I tried the options you mention regrading the intel module and they did not seem to make much difference to the time available on battery. The cpu does not seem to be excessively hot (i.e arounf 31c). I also retried vga_switcharoo (after I reenabled the radeon driver) turning the unused graphics off but this didn't make much if any difference. I did run powertop as suggested and this shows the i915 module as top of the top 10 it mentioned disabling nm_watcher (sorry can't remember exact name) but this and the other suggestions it made didn't help and infact the suggestion regarding usb autosuspend didn't help my usb mouse one bit. I do notice that in linux according to powertop my power consumption is quite high perhaps 22-23watts and even when the display dimmed with no activity this only dropped to 19watts all this even though according to powertop the cpu spent most of its time in c4 state which is suppossed to be desirable. Under windows the thinkpad power manager says that I am using around 6watts average and even while I'm typing this email usage is < 10watts. Is this normal under linux (i.e has power consumption always been quite a bit higher) or has this been introduced in recents kernels? I guess the problem for me is to effectiviely use the newer hardware I will neeed to be using a more recent kernel is that correct? Regards Jeff -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (3)
-
Jeff Hoare -
Stefan Quandt -
Tejas Guruswamy