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7 hr battery.. Not a chance
- Thread starter Dtp8513
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Have you taken a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be?
image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
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Also a big factor in battery life is the GPU. If you're using certain programs, it switches to the dedicated graphics card and will have substantially shorter life. Games probably all switch it, and even Google Chrome does.
Download THIS program and install it..it'll let you see what card you're using as well as let you 'lock' the desired card as active.
Download THIS program and install it..it'll let you see what card you're using as well as let you 'lock' the desired card as active.
From the Apple store site, the 7 hr battery is based on: "wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%".
If you do anything above basic web browsing your battery life will be 3-4.5 hrs. If you play games (especially if the AMD kicks in) it is more like 1.5-2 hrs.
If you do anything above basic web browsing your battery life will be 3-4.5 hrs. If you play games (especially if the AMD kicks in) it is more like 1.5-2 hrs.
I'm on my work Windows machine at the moment, so I can't check for sure. But I really doubt that Safari triggers the dedicated GPU. There are some things that Safari can be lacking on. However, there is a recent update that I haven't tried yet that may have fixed the speed and Javascript issues.
There's an application you can run on MBP's that have discrete cards that allows you to specify if you want to use the discrete video card only, integrated graphics only, or auto switch. You can find it in Anandtech.com's review of the 2011 MBP's. Whenever I run on battery, I always switch it to integrated only. My nephew watched 2 DVD's on my MBP the other day when we lost power with no issues after I had already used it to surf the net for a solid hour. That's over 4 hours of use (3 hours would be considered heavy use since the optical drive would have been running the whole time). This is a "high end" 2011 15" switched to integrated only. It still had battery life left, but the power came back on, so.....
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)
I'm pretty sure the card doesn't automatically switch you have to do it in system settings yourself
blevins321 said:
I'm pretty sure the card doesn't automatically switch you have to do it in system settings yourself
from http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/performance.html
The MBP before that (2010 model) could also switch automatically, the first and second Unibody MBP generation with the 9400/9600 combo couldn't and needed to be switched manually via System Preferences > Energy Saver >> Graphics, which resulted in a logout and login procedure, but one can use gfxCardStatus to do that without logging out and in again now.
If you don't have the new one then you don't know. The card DOES automatically switch if the MBP thinks you need it.
Most of the time I get roughly 3 hours w/ my laptop but like many others say, using the integrated graphics will allow you to browse for much longer. I think I even managed to get 8 to 9 hours w/ mine when I took a break in between browsing and the laptop had some time to cool down.
Since 2010, the cards have auto switched. That has been a selling feature that you no longer have to log out and back in to change it. The feature can be turned off in Setting preferences, but if I am not mistaken, it makes it dedicated only when turned off. Use the app stated in this thread.
Yep. That's the one. Pure sweetness. I am definitely donating soon. I was too lazy to look it up!
Safari does trigger the dGPU when it is updating thumbnails. I was honestly surprised to see it do that when I was just surfing the web.
Also remember that Apple doesn't ship Flash with new Macs, so when they do that test, it doesn't display any Flash ads, etc.
Dtp8513, if you did a clean install of OS X and repeated Apple's battery test, I'd bet you get a lot closer to their results.
Brightness turned down, turn off Bluetooth and etc + gfxcardstatus = battery life smiles.
I average 5-6 hours of general use...
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I average 5-6 hours of general use...
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
- I find that Apple's claim of 7 hours of battery life on the new MacBook Pro is quite accurate. I have the 2011 15" version, and I can easily get 7 hours.
Naturally, your battery life depends on what you are doing with your computer, but the claim of 7 hours of Wi-Fi browsing is very accurate.
I don't get the Apple stated 7-8 hours for my 2010 17" MBP. But I can get 4-5 pretty easily.
- close unused programs, programs running that you are not using use CPU time, memory which also uses some battery.
- turn screen brightness down to 50% or below
- turn keyboard backlight brightness down a lot
- don't have any USB devices plugged in
- Doing basic web browsing, email etc, I get 5+ hours
- close unused programs, programs running that you are not using use CPU time, memory which also uses some battery.
- turn screen brightness down to 50% or below
- turn keyboard backlight brightness down a lot
- don't have any USB devices plugged in
- Doing basic web browsing, email etc, I get 5+ hours
I have the new 13in MBP... And I can get more than 7hours of battery life if I'm just surfing the web (I'm not a fan of backlit keyboards, so I think that saves me a lot of battery). If I'm playing games/watching movies etc my battery dies much faster.
Some vague estimates of what I get -- light web browsing, ~8 hours; normal web browsing (flash, sound) 6-7; movie watching 3hours & some (two movies back to back, then battery life left over for at surfing the web); starcraft 2 on low (1-2 hours).
Some vague estimates of what I get -- light web browsing, ~8 hours; normal web browsing (flash, sound) 6-7; movie watching 3hours & some (two movies back to back, then battery life left over for at surfing the web); starcraft 2 on low (1-2 hours).
I'm seeing very good battery life - even with SSD + 500gb in Optibay, I still get 7+ hours in light usage and a solid 4-5 hours in more substantial usage.
My guess is you either have some application eating up your performance, or you have a faulty battery. Definitely try disabling the dedicated GFX - from reviews I've read it eats the battery. (I'm on the 13", so no dedicated GFX)
My guess is you either have some application eating up your performance, or you have a faulty battery. Definitely try disabling the dedicated GFX - from reviews I've read it eats the battery. (I'm on the 13", so no dedicated GFX)
90% of the problem will be that GPU. Back on my HP Envy (I haven't tested it much on the MBP) if I used the Intel graphics I was getting 5-6 hours, if I went with the ATI dedicated that number dropped to 3-4.
Other factors can make a difference to, such as network usage. I found myself doing a massive amount of wireless syncing with my Droid and it ate up the battery pretty hateful.
Other factors can make a difference to, such as network usage. I found myself doing a massive amount of wireless syncing with my Droid and it ate up the battery pretty hateful.