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RMPB battery

B

browerjs

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 25, 2011
63
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How long is everyone getting on their RMPB battery. Doing just basic surfing mine reports around 4:30-5 hours, but if I'm using iPhoto or something like that it drains a ton quicker. Based on the reviews I was expecting better then this considering they run video for 7+ hours straight.

Is anyone seeing this behavior?
 
From what I've read, people doing some intensive work, or playing games found the battery life was in the 4 to 5 hour range.

Given the intensity of the work, I'm not surprised, and to be honest I'm not disappointed. I expect the battery to last less then 7 hours if I'm doing photo editing Just the nature of the beast, more cpu consumption equates to less battery life
 
Extremely disappointed with the battery life here. Currently i'm sat here with 98% battery which says I have 4:45 left to go. I only have Safari with 2 tabs and activity monitor open.

There's some odd cpu activity as well. Safari keeps spiking to 10% without any activity actually happening and windowserver is constantly jumping from 4-10%. It seems that the machine is never actually 'idle', which probably explains the battery drain.
 
randomnut said:
Extremely disappointed with the battery life here. Currently i'm sat here with 98% battery which says I have 4:45 left to go. I only have Safari with 2 tabs and activity monitor open.

There's some odd cpu activity as well. Safari keeps spiking to 10% without any activity actually happening and windowserver is constantly jumping from 4-10%. It seems that the machine is never actually 'idle', which probably explains the battery drain.
Click to expand...

I was facing the same issue. I eventually figured out that Skype was forcing the nvidia GPU to kick in which was killing the battery. When I'm on the integrated GPU, I get a battery quote of 9 hours.
 
kingbob said:
I was facing the same issue. I eventually figured out that Skype was forcing the nvidia GPU to kick in which was killing the battery. When I'm on the integrated GPU, I get a battery quote of 9 hours.
Click to expand...

Hmm. I don't have Skype installed, and have installed gfxcardstatus to display an alert when the gpu changes. So far it's only been on the integrated graphics, and the battery has been draining fast.

The 7 hours is a complete lie from what I can see.

Just scrolling in safari spikes the cpu and the battery calculation decreases quite a lot. I guess you could get the stated 7 hours if you left it sat there doing nothing. With the screen off.
 
randomnut said:
Hmm. I don't have Skype installed, and have installed gfxcardstatus to display an alert when the gpu changes. So far it's only been on the integrated graphics, and the battery has been draining fast.

The 7 hours is a complete lie from what I can see.

Just scrolling in safari spikes the cpu and the battery calculation decreases quite a lot. I guess you could get the stated 7 hours if you left it sat there doing nothing. With the screen off.
Click to expand...

up to 7 hours... means it may be lower. It depends on what you are doing. I only ran it on full battery once, but I was just doing simple web surfing... but I pulled over 6 hours. I force the Intel GPU on, not just watch for it. Apple's tests also have the screen at half brightness, which is about where I had mine too.
 
I think i've pretty much resolved to take this MPB back to the store soon. The battery life on this new model is absolutely shocking. I just cannot achieve anything near the stated 7 hours even with Apples so called new 'real-world tests' they use to provide the figures.

Just simply using the machine only having safari with a few tabs open i'm getting around 3.5-4 hours battery life if i'm lucky.

I notice it's the scrolling on the pages which causes unreasonably high CPU activity and is thus draining the battery. I think the Anandtech review also noticed this.

This is some quite serious defects.
 
Just lower the brightness, use HD 4000 and everything will be fine, thats my opinion. From what I ve read, this Retina Displays are much brighter, that is reason why it drains battery so fast, but I cannot confirm it, I am still waiting for mine.
 
randomnut said:
I think i've pretty much resolved to take this MPB back to the store soon. The battery life on this new model is absolutely shocking. I just cannot achieve anything near the stated 7 hours even with Apples so called new 'real-world tests' they use to provide the figures.

Just simply using the machine only having safari with a few tabs open i'm getting around 3.5-4 hours battery life if i'm lucky.

I notice it's the scrolling on the pages which causes unreasonably high CPU activity and is thus draining the battery. I think the Anandtech review also noticed this.

This is some quite serious defects.
Click to expand...

I can confirm to be in exactly the same situation as yourself. Battery life is nowhere near what Apple estimated and what I had imagined it to be. The CPU is suffering more than it should rendering webpages such as Facebook, hopefully improvements will be made in ML to improve this.

Considering returning mine for an exchange to see if there's any difference, I also seem to be having an issue with a rattling noise (As if something is loose inside the machine) as well as creaking noise in the body. :eek:
 
seriously.. if you guys are NOT using gfxCardStatus 2.2 to force the Intel HD 4000 on when on battery, you will lose hours of time if your GPU gets kicked on.
 
I get 6-7 hours on moderate activity on battery but I force integrated graphics when on battery.

Mike
 
I have gfxcardstatus set to only use integrated whilst on battery. I have just fully charged my machine and it is saying I have 4:43 to go. Keyboard backlight off, screen at 3/4 brightness. Nothing open but Safari. Very very poor.

As stated earlier for some reason it takes an absolutely unreasonable amount of CPU to scroll in Safari in this machine. Check out Anandtechs review for a slightly more in-depth explanation but it is a very serious bug .

Has anyone got Mountain Lion installed on an rMBP? If so can you check if you are also seeing increased CPU activity just from simply scrolling in Safari or is it fixed in ML? Thanks.
 
randomnut said:
I have gfxcardstatus set to only use integrated whilst on battery. I have just fully charged my machine and it is saying I have 4:43 to go. Keyboard backlight off, screen at 3/4 brightness. Nothing open but Safari. Very very poor.

As stated earlier for some reason it takes an absolutely unreasonable amount of CPU to scroll in Safari in this machine. Check out Anandtechs review for a slightly more in-depth explanation but it is a very serious bug .

Has anyone got Mountain Lion installed on an rMBP? If so can you check if you are also seeing increased CPU activity just from simply scrolling in Safari or is it fixed in ML? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Tests are half brightness. Not 3/4. Also, just return it if you're unsatified
 
ljx718 said:
Tests are half brightness. Not 3/4. Also, just return it if you're unsatified
Click to expand...

I realise that but that doesn't explain less than 5 hours battery life for a machine not under any kind of real load. And I will be. This machine is terrible.
 
randomnut said:
I realise that but that doesn't explain less than 5 hours battery life for a machine not under any kind of real load. And I will be. This machine is terrible.
Click to expand...

Lithium ion batteries need to be charged and discharged a few times to reach their full capacity. The capacity will jump as much as 25% after the first few weeks of use.
 
I am getting around 6-7 hours of real life Wi-Fi web browsing with the occasional Flash video thrown in.

randomnut said:
Has anyone got Mountain Lion installed on an rMBP? If so can you check if you are also seeing increased CPU activity just from simply scrolling in Safari or is it fixed in ML? Thanks.
Click to expand...

I do, and it is showing a steady ~5% of CPU load when scrolling around a thread in MR using Safari, with three pages open each with approx 4 tabs. Mail, App Store, iTunes are running too, all actively doing their own thing (refreshing, downloading, playing music).

randomnut said:
I realise that but that doesn't explain less than 5 hours battery life for a machine not under any kind of real load. And I will be. This machine is terrible.
Click to expand...

Either yours is defective, or ML makes a huge difference. Since others aren't seeing battery life as poor as you're getting even on Lion I'd say yours is defective or something like that.
 
General light use I'm getting nowhere near 7 hours. I would say somewhere between 4-5 hours.
 
I looked into getting GFX Card Status but I didn't see that it yet supported the Retina MBP's. Could the fact that they're not explicitly supported cause problems?
 
Trey M said:
I looked into getting GFX Card Status but I didn't see that it yet supported the Retina MBP's. Could the fact that they're not explicitly supported cause problems?
Click to expand...

Download v2.2 beta 2 here (direct off the dev's website). It explicitly states support for the 2012 MacBook Pros (including Retina models).

I noticed some issues with b1, mainly, the power source based switching not working correctly, but it seems to have been fixed now.
 
Whilst doing some light browsing at 50% brightness, I get about 7 hours, as advertised by Apple. But when doing anything else than that, it goes much quicker. Typically 5 hours for my moderate use.
 
randomnut said:
I realise that but that doesn't explain less than 5 hours battery life for a machine not under any kind of real load. And I will be. This machine is terrible.
Click to expand...
There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
 
TheMacBookPro said:
Download v2.2 beta 2 here (direct off the dev's website). It explicitly states support for the 2012 MacBook Pros (including Retina models).

I noticed some issues with b1, mainly, the power source based switching not working correctly, but it seems to have been fixed now.
Click to expand...

Sweet thanks for the update. I loved GFX on my last model but I was hesitant this time around because I didn't want to mess anything up with a non-supported software version. I have noticed, however, that Apple seems to have really fixed the issue where the DGPU kicks in for no reason (in Chrome and such). This would, for the most part, eliminate my need for GFX, unless I'm really trying to save battery.

Or maybe it's because I've been using Safari more because Chrome is hideous atm :p
 
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