Piss-Poor Battery Life on HP Pavillion

CamTheSaxMan · 11-25-2013, 08:31 PM

I installed Linux Mint 13 a couple of days ago on my HP Pavilion g7-1338dx laptop using the mint4win installer. On Windows 7, I can easily get 5.5 hours of battery life, but on Linux Mint, I get a whopping 2 hours! I have laptop mode and pm-powersave enabled. I can unplug the power cable and just watch the battery meter drop as Linux continues to chug down my battery like it's a soft drink. I've also noticed that my cpu runs about 15°C hotter than does on Windows, and it's causing my fan to blow harder. I normally use my laptop plugged in like a desktop replacement, but I'm worried about energy usage. This is just ridiculous! It doesn't seem normal for Linux to have almost one-third the battery life of Windows.

Ztcoracat · 11-25-2013, 09:13 PM

Hi:

There may be other settings in Mint under your "Power Management" control section check there.

The increased battery usage is due to a problem in recent Linux kernels that result in it not idling the processor as well as do the recent MS Windows kernels; thus, with the processor running faster at idle, it's running hotter as well.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=141907
https://opendaily.wordpress.com/2009...nx-mint-by-50/

Also, depending on what version of the kernel Mint is using another way around it is to install a newer version of the kernel for hardware issues. The current version of the kernel is 3.12.1
https://www.kernel.org/

I haven't practiced the compiling and installing process of a more up to date stable version of the kernel. Sorry I won't be much help with that. I'm still studying-

http://www.berkes.ca/guides/linux_kernel.html

CamTheSaxMan · 11-26-2013, 01:36 AM

Do you know of any effective ways for me to control the CPU throttling? My computer runs extremely fast and snappy. I want to sacrifice some of the CPU speed to spare my battery.

aus9 · 11-26-2013, 02:01 AM

can you try a live cd with a smaller footprint = lower resource hungry window manager?

I am thinking lxde or enlightenment

enlighenment offers a setting of portable or desktop
consider bodhi as a live cd maybe?

CamTheSaxMan · 11-26-2013, 02:18 AM

Well, I really want to stick to Mint Cinnamon. I just love that distro. My laptop has plenty of resources to support it. I've got a quad-core 64-bit processor @2.2GHz and 4GB of RAM. I'm looking for a way to throttle my CPU so it won't be blazing all the time when it's idle. I can't imagine Cinnamon being more resource hungry than Windows Aero with all of its transparency, blur, and 3D animations. On my old laptop, I've tried Tiny Core Linux and it's battery life is less than I get with Windows Vista.

aus9 · 11-26-2013, 05:34 AM

ok fair enough

there are re-compiled vanilla kernels that have a bit of a tweak

http://liquorix.net/

cascade9 · 11-26-2013, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CamTheSaxMan

Well, I really want to stick to Mint Cinnamon. I just love that distro. My laptop has plenty of resources to support it. I've got a quad-core 64-bit processor @2.2GHz and 4GB of RAM. I'm looking for a way to throttle my CPU so it won't be blazing all the time when it's idle. I can't imagine Cinnamon being more resource hungry than Windows Aero with all of its transparency, blur, and 3D animations. On my old laptop, I've tried Tiny Core Linux and it's battery life is less than I get with Windows Vista.

Unless you've got some optional CPU, no, its not a quad core, its a dual core with hyperhreading.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...name=c03291287

BTW, HP made a mistake, i3-2350M is actually a 2.3GHz CPU-

http://ark.intel.com/products/53438

Looking at the HP drivers page for the g7-1338d I see AMD GPU drivers listed-

http://www.driversdownloader.com/hp-...dx-notebook-pc

If you have a moel with an AMD GPU, unless you've turned it off with one of various methods, it stays turned on. Eating power and creating heat. Which would explain the battery life and higher CPU temps.

Ztcoracat · 11-26-2013, 11:21 AM

Here's the HP spec's page-
HP's Customer Service Number (if you need it) 1-800-474-6836 (1-800 HP INVENT)

2.30 GHz 2nd generation Intel Core i3-2350M Processor

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...roduct=5263042

CamTheSaxMan · 11-26-2013, 12:02 PM

Yes, it's actually a 2.30 GHZ CPU (I made a typo). I know for a fact that it's quad core. It says it on a sticker, and both Windows and Linux detect 4 cores. I have not installed any drivers. The system is as-is except for the power management stuff I installed. (I am quite impressed, though. With a stock reinstall of Windows 7, I had to install loads of drivers to get everything working properly. With Linux, it worked out of the box!)

I'd like to do the following things, if someone could help me:
I want to find out what my hardware is (or rather what Linux thinks my hardware is).I'm looking for something similar to Device Manager in Windows.
I want to find out what drivers are installed for each piece of hardware.
I want to find out what clock rate my CPU is currently set to and how it scales under different conditions.
I want to be able to underclock my CPU if the clock rate is set too high.

Germany_chris · 11-26-2013, 05:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CamTheSaxMan

Yes, it's actually a 2.30 GHZ CPU (I made a typo). I know for a fact that it's quad core. It says it on a sticker, and both Windows and Linux detect 4 cores. I have not installed any drivers. The system is as-is except for the power management stuff I installed. (I am quite impressed, though. With a stock reinstall of Windows 7, I had to install loads of drivers to get everything working properly. With Linux, it worked out of the box!)

I'd like to do the following things, if someone could help me:
I want to find out what my hardware is (or rather what Linux thinks my hardware is).I'm looking for something similar to Device Manager in Windows.
I want to find out what drivers are installed for each piece of hardware.
I want to find out what clock rate my CPU is currently set to and how it scales under different conditions.
I want to be able to underclock my CPU if the clock rate is set too high.

mint4win is like WUBI if you install the normal way your problems will most likely go away...

side note all intel CPU that hyper thread will report the number of threads i.e. quad i7's will report 8

Ztcoracat · 11-26-2013, 09:17 PM

Quote:

I want to find out what my hardware is (or rather what Linux thinks my hardware is).I'm looking for something similar to Device Manager in Windows.

To find that out open the terminal and run:

Code:

lspci

The lspci command will provide you with the output in regard to what processor, graphics card and etc.....

Quote:

I want to find out what drivers are installed for each piece of hardware.

Read through the output of the command:

Code:

lsmod

Sorry I don't know how to overclock or underclock--
This thread may help you to do that-
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-linux-794811/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hard...ck-laptop.html

cascade9 · 11-27-2013, 12:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CamTheSaxMan

Yes, it's actually a 2.30 GHZ CPU (I made a typo). I know for a fact that it's quad core. It says it on a sticker, and both Windows and Linux detect 4 cores.

If its a i3-2350M it is not a quad core, its a dual core with hyperthearding.

Dont believe me? Check the intel specs page.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CamTheSaxMan

I want to be able to underclock my CPU if the clock rate is set too high.

With a modern frequency scalling CPU, underclocking will most likely not save you any power. It could actually use more power in some situations (screwing around with the CPU frequencies can stop the system from dropping back to lower power/mhz modes at low loads, etc.)

DavidMcCann · 11-27-2013, 12:15 PM

There are lot of posts on the web about power saving for the Linux laptop. Some things you can do are

1. Set the drive mounting to "noatime,nodiratime"
2. Set maximum power managment on the drive with the command "hdparm -B 128"
3. Reduce buffer flushing with the command "echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs"
4. Make sure the external monitor port isn't live with xrandr and turn it off if it is.
5. If you don't need Blutooth, disable it with hciconfig.
6. Set wifi power-saving mode.

CamTheSaxMan · 11-27-2013, 12:18 PM

@Germany_chris I followed your advice and I just uninstalled my mint4win installation, installed Mint the normal way, and ran mintupdate. No powersaving utilities or anything is installed--just the stuff that came with Mint. My battery meter seems pretty inaccurate and jumps around quite a bit, though. Assuming it's at least showing the correct percentage, I calculated the total battery life to be 4h 17m! This is still not quite as much as the 5h 30m I get in Windows, but it's decent. My laptop also feels cooler to the touch. I was under the impression that the mint4win installation is exactly the same as the regular installation except that the Linux partition is a virtual partition that's stored as a file on a Windows partition, and that it just adds an entry to the Windows boot manager rather than completely replacing it with GRUB. It's curious that battery life would be different between the two.

@Ztoracat Thanks a lot! That's what I was looking for. But lsmod seems to list kernel modules. Are kernel modules and drivers the same thing?

@cascade9 This is the output of lscpu and nproc. Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, but I'm pretty sure I have 4 CPUs. Also, both the Windows 7 Task Manager and the Linux Mint System Monitor show 4 different graphs, one for each CPU. Does this mean that my CPU is really clocked at 800MHz, or is some scaling taking place?

Code:

cameron@HP-Pavilion-g7-Notebook-PC ~ $ lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 42
Stepping:              7
CPU MHz:               800.000
BogoMIPS:              4589.63
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              3072K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3
cameron@HP-Pavilion-g7-Notebook-PC ~ $ nproc
4

Maybe underclocking isn't the right word to use. What I really meant is adjusting the CPU scaling to something lower.

Germany_chris · 11-27-2013, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CamTheSaxMan

@Germany_chris I followed your advice and I just uninstalled my mint4win installation, installed Mint the normal way, and ran mintupdate. No powersaving utilities or anything is installed--just the stuff that came with Mint. My battery meter seems pretty inaccurate and jumps around quite a bit, though. Assuming it's at least showing the correct percentage, I calculated the total battery life to be 4h 17m! This is still not quite as much as the 5h 30m I get in Windows, but it's decent. My laptop also feels cooler to the touch. I was under the impression that the mint4win installation is exactly the same as the regular installation except that the Linux partition is a virtual partition that's stored as a file on a Windows partition, and that it just adds an entry to the Windows boot manager rather than completely replacing it with GRUB. It's curious that battery life would be different between the two.

@Ztoracat Thanks a lot! That's what I was looking for. But lsmod seems to list kernel modules. Are kernel modules and drivers the same thing?

@cascade9 This is the output of lscpu and nproc. Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, but I'm pretty sure I have 4 CPUs. Also, both the Windows 7 Task Manager and the Linux Mint System Monitor show 4 different graphs, one for each CPU. Does this mean that my CPU is really clocked at 800MHz, or is some scaling taking place?

Code:

cameron@HP-Pavilion-g7-Notebook-PC ~ $ lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 42
Stepping:              7
CPU MHz:               800.000
BogoMIPS:              4589.63
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              3072K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3
cameron@HP-Pavilion-g7-Notebook-PC ~ $ nproc
4

Maybe underclocking isn't the right word to use. What I really meant is adjusting the CPU scaling to something lower.

It's reading threads..threads per core 2 cores per socket 2..you have 2 cores that can each process 2 thread hence your OS is seeing 4 cores..you have 2 cores...

I use laptop-mode-tools in Arch to setup how I wan't my power, how fast I want the CPU's to ramp up etc.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/23211...n-ubuntu-12-10

I also make adjustments in CPUPower I can get about 6 hours with my C2D and a 9cell battery. If I add slice I flirt with 12 and my computer is far older and less efficient than yours.