Comments on: Vista Power Plans: Balanced vs. High Performance

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:34:37 +0000

No kidding….My laptop was experiencing heating issues when I was running the high performance profile….after reading this article, I switched to balanced profile and my laptop is doing great. The laptop was running at 75° C (60°C in idle status) in high performance…..with all the same applications running (in balanced profile) the temperature dropped between 61° and 65°C(53°C in idle status). I also checked the voltage….in high performance the CPU was receiving maximium voltage of 1.34, however with balanced profile active the voltage was being throttled between 1.06 and 1.34 based on usage. Heat issues have gone and the laptop performance is even better and that’s because the high performance profile was feeding the processor full voltage constantly, resulting in heat generation….balanced profile was throttling the voltage ensuring better performance and reduced heat generation. Remember higher temperature’s = reduced performance and vice versa.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:18:51 +0000

Anonymous wrote:

I liked the High Performance plan because of the brightness and I thought that it made my laptop faster but now I am switching back to Balanced and going to change the brightness level higher- but it won’t make it the same as High Performance, will it?

No, the high performance plan adjusts things other than just the brightness. For example, it throttles your CPU speed so that it only runs at full speed when it's really needed.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:35:19 +0000

I liked the High Performance plan because of the brightness and I thought that it made my laptop faster but now I am switching back to Balanced and going to change the brightness level higher- but it won’t make it the same as High Performance, will it?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:09:09 +0000

StationStops.com wrote:

After a couple months of just figuring my new notebook was a power hog, I did some testing and found out it was because I was using 802.11n.

That's really interesting... I would have never guessed that 802.11n would take up so much extra power.

By: StationStops.com

StationStops.com — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:38:43 +0000

I was having horrible battery life, even on power saver, on my XPS1330. I knew it wasn’t Vista as I had ran Vista with great battery life on an older Dell laptop.

After a couple months of just figuring my new notebook was a power hog, I did some testing and found out it was because I was using 802.11n.

When I switched to 802.11g or 802.11b, my battery life was great, even under balanced.

I guess Intel’s first ABGN chip isnt very well optimized for 802.11n yet.