2013 15" rMBP - Bad Battery Life?

[adamjon858]

I'm not sure if this is a problem with my exact model or if I'm just extrapolating the claimed 8 hours for a use case that's more intensive.

I have the 15" with 16GB ram, 2.3ghz and the 750m.

The following is while connected to wifi with full strength, playing music at half volume and screen at half brightness with 1920x1200 resolution.

I'm not sure what is killing my battery life as I really don't have that much going on. I'm not running anything with videos or flash in Chrome. I just have about 20 tabs open for normal browsing.

I'm thinking running at 1920x1200 might be the culprit here as it seems to always force the high perf mode.

 

[reery]

At first sight my 2 cents:

Spotify may have a bug where it puts 100% load onto one core.

I've seen this bug in Windows as well.

Chrome uses more power the more tabs you have opened.

 

[adamjon858]

At first sight my 2 cents:

Spotify may have a bug where it puts 100% load onto one core.

I've seen this bug in Windows as well.

Chrome uses more power the more tabs you have opened.

I don't seem to be have a terrible amount of CPU load from it:

Will I gain much by using Safari > Chrome?

 

[Merode]

A ton, but I still don't think it makes up for the difference.

 

[reery]

Safari consumes far less power than Chrome. Firefox uses even more than Chrome.

Spotify will not use 100% of one core all the time, but for a simple music stream app it consumes sometimes more than some power apps.

 

[adamjon858]

I just read on Spotify's website that it is the reason for the high perf switch.

Turned off Spotify and switched to Grooveshark web. Using the integrated now but I only gained 20 mins.

 

[Watabou]

Safari consumes far less power than Chrome. Firefox uses even more than Chrome.

Spotify will not use 100% of one core all the time, but for a simple music stream app it consumes sometimes more than some power apps.

The latest Firefox actually uses way less power for more tabs than chrome. Try it yourself. Safari uses the least power though so that's what I use during class and I'm back on Firefox when I'm back home.

My battery life with the different browsers are as follows: (these were tested during three days, using different browsers each day, using the same amount of brightness: about 40-50%, and with about 15-20 tabs open)

Oh and I go to school around 8am and come back home around 7. And I looked at the battery usage after I came home.

Firefox: 7 hours
Safari: 9:30 hours
Chrome: 4:30 hours. (My battery ran out using chrome before the end of the day unlike the two above)

Obviously, your mileage may vary. I used chrome stable, Firefox nightly and the stable version of safari and with the browser open, pages, tweetbot, mail, iTunes, iTerm, MacVim, Dropbox and IntelliJ running.

 

[reery]

What is this Google Chrome Renderer and Helper which is not responding but using one full core?

Can you end these tasks?

To make sure that you don't have any hardware issues, close all apps, load your battery to 100%, unplug and wait about 5 minutes. While idle read the remaining time then. It should be around 7 to 10 hours.

 

[koppie644]

I don't seem to be have a terrible amount of CPU load from it:
Image


Will I gain much by using Safari > Chrome?

12.5% CPU for some programs. For an i7 (quad-core, 8 threads), 12.5% means using a single core to the extreme!

I am calling you, Chrome!!!

 

[Starfyre]

Sometimes those time estimates can be VERY inaccurate. Real time may be longer or shorter depending on what your doing. In any case, if this is a very new machine that you just started using, sometimes you just need to go through more charge cycles before you see more improvement in the battery life. If you've gone through at least 1 cycle where you've gone from 0 to 100% and the estimate doesn't improve, then something else is the issue.

 

[pat.micunnis]

I'm not sure if this is a problem with my exact model or if I'm just extrapolating the claimed 8 hours for a use case that's more intensive.

I have the 15" with 16GB ram, 2.3ghz and the 750m.

The following is while connected to wifi with full strength, playing music at half volume and screen at half brightness with 1920x1200 resolution.

Image

Image

I'm not sure what is killing my battery life as I really don't have that much going on. I'm not running anything with videos or flash in Chrome. I just have about 20 tabs open for normal browsing.

I'm thinking running at 1920x1200 might be the culprit here as it seems to always force the high perf mode.

Did you let your machine run all the way through the 2 1/2 hours? Did the battery die after?

 

[covertash]

Just for giggles, do you have a case on your machine?

 

[adamjon858]

No case on the machine.

I downloaded gfxCardStatus and forced integrated graphics and ran it down using the SAME programs listed above with the exception of Spotify. At 90% it said 5 hours left and ended up lasting for a little over that.

Dedicated graphics is a massive battery hog without a whole lot of performance gain as far as I can tell.