program to lock the AMD Sempron processor speed?

[daver]

i've been enjoying every minute of my new laptop, but recently, i've been required to work on the go for many hours straight (sometimes up to 6) with my laptop and not be able to plug in to charge my battery. even without any wireless, using the Windows system setting to downclock my processor (it's an AMD Sempron 2800+), and have the brightness all the way down, i can only run for 3 hours tops.

however, it appears that i need more juice than that. at the lowest speed, my notebook runs ~800MHz. does anyone know of a SAFE program that will let me underclock the processor further to run maybe at 450MHz or something? i don't care about speed. i just open up OneNote, MS Word, or draft up e-mails in Outlook. i only listen to music at home...

thank god my TH55 hasn't been decommissioned. people find it funny that i use both my laptop and PDA.

[hucsman]

Have you considered getting an extra battery, possibly more cells?

[daver]

extra battery is over $100 CAD. and i don't have the pocket money for that right now.. unless you're willing to donate to the Daver Needs an Extra Notebook Battery Foundation

[Rampax]

Since its a new laptop, you may want to consider exchanging it. The AMD sempron is not the greatest in battery life. The pentium M, or the celeron M would be better. In fact, my 2ghz turion has more juice than your sempron even if I dont minimize settings. I get about 3 hours surfing the net (not wifi) on battery.

[daver]

i should mention that the battery is only a 6-cell lithium-ion. your laptop might have 12 cells instead of the measily 6.

i failed to mention that i get the 3 hours with wifi on for about 1-2 (usually only 1 hour) of those 3 hours. so technically, if i didn't go wireless, i should get about 4 hours? on top of that, i always have a USB stick plugged in (my documents and work storage), every now and then i use my friend's wireless mouse (some Logitech one), and I often burn CDs with documents on them for projects and stuff like that.

the Compaq model i have has actually been out of production for at least a year now (i think it ended in 2003 from what i read). so it's kind of expected to have bad battery life, i think. i'm just trying to make lemonade here.

i didn't even buy this laptop: it was a gift from an ex-girlfriend. it's uber cheap anyways, so i didn't expect too much from it anyways.

maybe i'm just spoiled by my TH55.

[Rampax]

Well in that case, you are pretty much outta luck, unless you buy a spare battery or a bigger battery. I have an 8-cell battery and a rather powerful (therefore more power consumption) laptop and it is getting about the same amount of juice as your compaq. A 12-cell battery would give your laptop quite a bit more life, but they are quite expensive and I really doubt that there is a program that would reduce your processor speed even further. Even if there was, it will probably cause instability and you would be running an extra process in the background, so it probably wont help that much.

My advice would be to try and reduce the amount of cd burning, reduce wifi usage (but dont constantly turn it on and off), blank your screen when you are not using it, put it on standby if you are away for more than 3-5 mins, make sure the contacts on your battery is clean, remove and disable all the devices you dont need (ie firewire or Lan, etc), and turn off unnecessary software. Be aware of what websites you are about to view. Some websites have high quality images/animations, etc and require your computer to pump out extra juice in order to show you the image.

The only other way to reduce power consumption would be to spend money on things like ram, or slower hard drive. If you are in a car a lot, you should consider buying an adapter so that you can charge you battery on the go. Of course, an extra battery costs pretty much the same thing and is probably more beneficial for you.

[Robyr]

A small 150W inverter cost no where near what an extra battery would cost. I got my 300W inverter (two outlets, enough power for 3 laptops ;) ) for like 50 bucks.

[daver]

@Rampax,
unfortunately, a second 6-cell battery would cost me about $150 CAD, and a 12-cell is about $200 CAD. if i were to get a second battery, my guess is the 12-cell would be a better deal. but unfortunately, i've already been saving up $350 to go on a weekend ski trip with friends come January, so i've no money for the battery. plus, it wouldn't really be worth it if i can just switch to my TH55 when my laptop battery dies (well, reaches that 5% point where the laptop goes into the whole "conserve battery" mode).

due to the courses i'm taking now, i average 1 CD burning a day, 4 days a week. i've disabled one of my USB ports already, and disabled many other devices that i'll never use (fax modem, PCI card slot, etc). on top of that, i have my monitor turn off after one minute when not in use (no screensaver), and have the system stand-by after 10 minutes, and hibernate after 20.

@robyr,
an inverter would be great, but i don't have a car. i bus to campus, so i never have access to a lighter socket outlet thingy.

[Robyr]

:( that sucks. My power inverters are all that keep me sane with a UX50 (i actually have a 12V -> 5V USB adapter). When i had my laptop, a 6 yr old Toshiba Tecra 8000, my battery life was ~ 1.5 hours with a new battery, and it was un bearable. The UX50 is actually a usable alternative ;)

[daver]

:( that sucks. My power inverters are all that keep me sane with a UX50 (i actually have a 12V -> 5V USB adapter). When i had my laptop, a 6 yr old Toshiba Tecra 8000, my battery life was ~ 1.5 hours with a new battery, and it was un bearable. The UX50 is actually a usable alternative ;)
"sucks" is right. my TH55 and KB100 make things much better when my battery's completely toast. and then my friends used to laugh at me for lugging around both a laptop and PDA with a keyboard. they even said that my TH55 was wimpy with it's small screen and weak processor, etc. etc.

then, when the end of our 15-hour days draw near, it's 9:30 pm, and we all need to check our e-mail one last time before heading home, i'm the only one who has the ability to connect to wifi, all thanks to my trusty TH55 with more than 50% battery (i only charge the battery every other day now) left, and Clie Mail. wimpy PDA my eye! :D :D

my average schedule is classes from 8-12, and then 3-6. but about 2 days a week, my schedule stretches lik crazy, from 8am - 2pm straight, and then from 3 pm - 10 pm straight. so my x-mas list for Santa this year would simply be 4 extra batteries for my laptop, or a superbattery that lasts 5+ hours of wifi and full processor speed.

[Robyr]

sounds like me with my UX, i usually stream shoutcast broadcasts over BT for half of the day (mornings, because working in the morning SUCKS) And then just use it as my laptop / mini desktop the rest, gets by perfectly, i usually end up with 30-40% battery left, not great, yet not awesome. I need to do a hard test of runtime on my UX, i think i can squeeze like 5hours of BT life with the screen on, 8-9 with the screen off, and like a solid 10 hours with everything off but the screen. Dont ask me how i do it, but 1% screen brightness prolly helps

[daver]

actually, i use my TH55 at 1% brightness too. the slider is all the way to the left of hte slider bar. the only time i increase the brightness is when i'm outside in blaring sunlight. then i increase the brightness so that the slider is directly underneath the "A". I've rarely ever brought the slider past 50%.

back on topic:
i've found a program called Notebook Hardware Control (version 1.9b) which is freeware, so long as i don't use profiles. it basically lets me lock the processor to 800MHz, which Windows does not let me fully acheive. With the Windows auto-clock thingamajiggy, it will underclock the processor to 800MHz, but bring up the clock speed back to full strength when running some programs or starting up others. with NHC, i can completely lock the processor speed (safely) to 800MHz. at least i'll be able to get out an extra 10-15 minutes, which i guess is better than nothing right?

lemonade anyone? :cool:

[Tam Hanna]

Why not get a bunch of NiMH batteries and a switching converter from, e.g. Dallas-Maxim?

Then, you could simply "charge" the notebook from the batteries on the go. Sorta like a power to go from PalmOne's and probably amn cheap if you keep to the application circuits in the datasheets!

[SamuraiCatJB]

Why not get a bunch of NiMH batteries and a switching converter from, e.g. Dallas-Maxim?

Then, you could simply "charge" the notebook from the batteries on the go. Sorta like a power to go from PalmOne's and probably amn cheap if you keep to the application circuits in the datasheets!

very innefficient... but for the same price as the required "bunch" of NiMH batteries: http://www.laptopbattery.net/universalbatteries.html

[daver]

i considered someting like that, and it would still fit in my backpack despite all the other things in it. yes, i do have an enormous pack:http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441776185&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302700149&bmUID=1133128411304.

i have the 42 litre pack, FYI. but it's just a pain in the butt to lug around an extra few pounds if i don't really need it. i can easily sacrifice the productivity and screen size when i need to by switching to my TH55.

my only other concern (for now) is finding some cheap sleeve just to protect my laptop from getting all scratched up.

[SamuraiCatJB]

make a sleeve. get scrap cloth from the store, make a pillow case for it (i.e. one fold, two sides sewn). You will find some good materials cheap because they are too small to make anything too complicated. But a single yard will be large for what you are talking about. And since after you sew it, you turn it inside out, most of your sewing mistakes aren't shown. But if you are worried they have cheap sewing guides to help you sew in a straight line.

I do this for my flutes now.

[daver]

actually, i have made my own sleeve, but it's not working too well. i've taken 5 pillow cases that i bought from a Salvation Army store, sewn them all together, and even tried to make some pockets for CD/DVD cases, etc. it worked well for the first few days. but my text books and water bottle seem to be able to poke through the 5 layers of cloth and scratch the black plastic on the top of my laptop. don't ask me how a text book or water bottle can scratch a surface underneath 5 layers of cloth. i couldn't explain to you, but that's what happened, at least 3 times now. i've used a black Sharpie to draw over the hideous white lines that run from end to end of my laptop cover.

anyways, i don't have anything to carry my laptop around with, except my backpack. i was planning on getting something cheap (like $20) as a carrying case sort of thing for my laptop. a sleeve seemed to be the best option: extremely cheap (i've heard of some going for $15 CAD) and the material is good enough to prevent from scratches from everyday use.

[Rampax]

actually, i use my TH55 at 1% brightness too. the slider is all the way to the left of hte slider bar. the only time i increase the brightness is when i'm outside in blaring sunlight. then i increase the brightness so that the slider is directly underneath the "A". I've rarely ever brought the slider past 50%.

back on topic:
i've found a program called Notebook Hardware Control (version 1.9b) which is freeware, so long as i don't use profiles. it basically lets me lock the processor to 800MHz, which Windows does not let me fully acheive. With the Windows auto-clock thingamajiggy, it will underclock the processor to 800MHz, but bring up the clock speed back to full strength when running some programs or starting up others. with NHC, i can completely lock the processor speed (safely) to 800MHz. at least i'll be able to get out an extra 10-15 minutes, which i guess is better than nothing right?

lemonade anyone? :cool:

Heres an idea, why dont you try to underclock your video card. Although it may be hard to find a program to do this if you have integrated video.

[joepagIII]

try speedswitchxp

[Cyker]

Does your Sempron support PowerNow! or Cool'n'Quiet?

There are apps that let you hack the clock speed and (more importantly!) the CPU core voltage, which is really cool.

I recently got an Athlon64 and have discovered it will drop it's voltage to 1.1v when under low/no load, but jump it back up to 1.4 when it needs to. The upshot is the thing runs ridiculously cool because so little power is going through it! :D


If yours is an AMD64-based Sempron as opposed to an AthlonXP one you might be able to tweak that stuff... if not, I'm not sure :(

[daver]

yup, my Sempron is a PowerNow! and Cool'n'Quiet processor.

right now, i'm just using the Notebook Hardware Control, which is doing fine for me. but i really can't do much more with a 6-cell battery.