RMBP, windows battery possible big bug?

[angelus512]

I e noticed this over the last few days so thought I'd post here I case any odd noticed similar.
I think windows either
A) drains power faster than the power cord can supply and as such cuts into the battery slowly over hours.
Or
B) is unable to charge the battery because it's drawing so much power just to run.


I play civ 5 gods and kings on my win7 partition. 3-4 times now over last few days I've noticed the cable light suddenly turn to charge and notice to my surprise my battery was charging up from say 89% or so. Yet it would stay charging for HOURS and never get past 93-94 or so.
Then I'd boot back into OSX and charging would be done in like 5 mins.

Now this is weird. But it begs the question did I accidentally knock the power cord slightly lose on my leg and notice realize until later and hence it's charging up. But still doesn't explain the fact win7 can't seem to charge properly.

Or I didn't knock the power cord lose and win7 is slowly eating into my battery over hours. Can't really say but i do tend to notice when my cord is not properly attached as the green light is fairly conspicuous.

 

[dmccloud]

I e noticed this over the last few days so thought I'd post here I case any odd noticed similar.
I think windows either
A) drains power faster than the power cord can supply and as such cuts into the battery slowly over hours.
Or
B) is unable to charge the battery because it's drawing so much power just to run.


I play civ 5 gods and kings on my win7 partition. 3-4 times now over last few days I've noticed the cable light suddenly turn to charge and notice to my surprise my battery was charging up from say 89% or so. Yet it would stay charging for HOURS and never get past 93-94 or so.
Then I'd boot back into OSX and charging would be done in like 5 mins.

Now this is weird. But it begs the question did I accidentally knock the power cord slightly lose on my leg and notice realize until later and hence it's charging up. But still doesn't explain the fact win7 can't seem to charge properly.

Or I didn't knock the power cord lose and win7 is slowly eating into my battery over hours. Can't really say but i do tend to notice when my cord is not properly attached as the green light is fairly conspicuous.

It's not a rMBP issue - Windows power management is horrible compared to OS X. It happens on MBA and cMBPs as well...

 

[Office Hours]

It's not a rMBP issue - Windows power management is horrible compared to OS X. It happens on MBA and cMBPs as well...

Um, care to explain why that doesn't occur with any other Windows laptops? The blame lays on Apple. Very likely a bootcamp/driver issue.

 

[Icy1007]

This does't happen with my MBP.

 

[angelus512]

And it's confirmed. Windows is eating my battery even when it's connected to power. Been in windows for 30-40 mins now. Charge was 100% when I logged in. My battery symbol now says I have 98%.

----------

Or maybe not but something fishy going on. So after the post above i quit back into OSX and checked my battery charge with Coconut battery or one of those other programs.

Think the charge was the same as when I logged out of OSX>

Logged back into windows immediately and charge now says 100%

Got some clear bootcamp driver support issues here in that windows seems unable to manage the battery or read it correctly or a combination of the above.

What i can say for sure though is that it is using battery even when its under power. Not a heap but definitely a bit.

 

[Lord Appleseed]

This is not happening to me.

When the battery is drained and i plug in the power-cord, even while gaming the rMBP will charge until the light turns green. It might take a little longer than on the MacOS side, I didn't count time.

However I can tell that my rMBP does not draw any power from the battery when the power-cord is in. At least i never noticed the light on the mag-save connector turning from green to orange again.

 

[dmccloud]

Um, care to explain why that doesn't occur with any other Windows laptops? The blame lays on Apple. Very likely a bootcamp/driver issue.

I've seen this behavior on four different models of MBPs over the years (mid-2008, late 2010, late 2011, rMBP). With all four notebooks, battery life was significantly shorter in Windows than it was in OS X. People I work with have also experienced the same issue with their Macs (several of whom are running the MacBook Air). On the driver side of things, the Microsoft OEMs (i.e., Dell, HP, Acer, etc) are getting additional help on the driver side from Microsoft that is not being offered to Apple, so they might have access to some tricks on the API side to improve battery life. Microsoft also has yet to implement full EFI support (supposedly will be present in Windows 8) in its OS, so that might be affecting the power consumption as well.

 

[angelus512]

For those that replied talking about battery life we all k ow its **** under windows. I was talking about windows draining my battery when it's plugged into power.....

 

[entraik]

For those that replied talking about battery life we all k ow its **** under windows. I was talking about windows draining my battery when it's plugged into power.....

Probably an issue with your power cable or simply your laptop. Get it checked out at the apple store.

 

[tninety]

It's not a rMBP issue - Windows power management is horrible compared to OS X. It happens on MBA and cMBPs as well...

No, it's because Apple doesn't work very hard making the Windows experience on Macs actually good. They could have written a gMux driver, but to hell with that, right? Apple's Boot Camp sucks, not Windows' power management.

 

[Erasmus]

Your computer has a 45W CPU, and a 35W GPU. That's 80W right there. Add the screen, RAM, SSD, etc can easily push the power draw up over 90W, if not 100W. Clearly, as the computers have a 85W power adapter, the battery has to provide the remaining power. Therefore, if you play 3D computer games, or do anything else demanding on your hardware, the battery charge will decrease. This is normal.

The only problem with the Windows drivers is that they don't support graphics switching, therefore the discrete card is always active. Therefore idle power consumption is higher in Windows than in OSX, therefore after playing your game, the battery takes longer to charge in Windows than it would in OSX.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

I e noticed this over the last few days so thought I'd post here I case any odd noticed similar.
I think windows either
A) drains power faster than the power cord can supply and as such cuts into the battery slowly over hours.
Or
B) is unable to charge the battery because it's drawing so much power just to run.


I play civ 5 gods and kings on my win7 partition. 3-4 times now over last few days I've noticed the cable light suddenly turn to charge and notice to my surprise my battery was charging up from say 89% or so. Yet it would stay charging for HOURS and never get past 93-94 or so.
Then I'd boot back into OSX and charging would be done in like 5 mins.

Now this is weird. But it begs the question did I accidentally knock the power cord slightly lose on my leg and notice realize until later and hence it's charging up. But still doesn't explain the fact win7 can't seem to charge properly.

Or I didn't knock the power cord lose and win7 is slowly eating into my battery over hours. Can't really say but i do tend to notice when my cord is not properly attached as the green light is fairly conspicuous.

If it's a bug, it's a Windows bug. I hope you don't expect Apple to troubleshoot and support Windows issues.

 

[Erasmus]

If it's a bug, it's a Windows bug. I hope you don't expect Apple to troubleshoot and support Windows issues.

Whether it's a Windows bug, or a Bootcamp driver bug is irrelevant. Apple have provided a method by which you can run a competing OS on their hardware, and provided ample support to get it working with most of Apple's non-standard hardware. Apple have clearly implemented their own version of graphics switching technology that is compatible with both AMD and NVIDIA cards, but for whatever reason have either not bothered, or been unable to get this system functioning correctly under Windows.

Basically, the end result is, customers can either take it or leave it. Apple have no obligation to support Windows on their hardware at all, and their choice to create BootCamp should be seen as nothing other than a gift.