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Strontium

Member

Registered: 2014-06-25

Posts: 11

[SOLVED] Bad battery life on Gigabyte P35K gaming laptop

Originally, I was running Windows 8 on this laptop and I was getting < 5 hours of battery life. Now, with Arch Linux, I get about 2.5 hours of battery life.

I have tried multiple methods such as Powertop, TLP, and the powerdown scripts. None of them seemed to work. I have no idea what kind of logs or other information I should provide to solve this.

Last edited by Strontium (2014-07-18 02:04:02)

ANOKNUSA

Member

Registered: 2010-10-22

Posts: 2,141

Re: [SOLVED] Bad battery life on Gigabyte P35K gaming laptop

Less battery power is consumed under Windows thanks to Nvidia Optimus, which switches off the Nvidia GPU unless you're actually running something graphics-intensive. Currently this needs to be handled manually under Linux.

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Linux != Windows  ::  Ask Questions the Smart Way  ::  Configs

Strontium

Member

Registered: 2014-06-25

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Bad battery life on Gigabyte P35K gaming laptop

Less battery power is consumed under Windows thanks to Nvidia Optimus, which switches off the Nvidia GPU unless you're actually running something graphics-intensive. Currently this needs to be handled manually under Linux.

Your reply actually helped a ton. I reread the Bumblebee wiki page and learned about bbswitch. Installing it fixed my issue. Thanks!

ANOKNUSA

Member

Registered: 2010-10-22

Posts: 2,141

Re: [SOLVED] Bad battery life on Gigabyte P35K gaming laptop

Glad to hear it. Word has it Nvidia is working on getting native Optimus support up and running; it's a shame it's taking so long.

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Linux != Windows  ::  Ask Questions the Smart Way  ::  Configs