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Playing Starcraft II on 17" MBP. Terrible Battery life.

B

Boostin

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 19, 2009
56
0
Phoenix
Ok, before I start, I realize that my battery life should and will be very poor while playing games, especially Starcraft II. However, heres my situation. I have the 2010, 17" 2.66ghz i7, 8GB ram, and 7200RPM drive. I had my screen brightness about 80%, and all the settings of Starcraft II on low. I started with a full battery, and was playing multiplayer online 1v1. It was in full screen and nothing else was open or running in the background. My battery lasted 1 hour, and 19 minutes. My question is is this normal or do you guys think something is wrong with my my battery. Anyone else run any tests like this? Also, I was playing on the mac, on 10.6.4 If I forgot to give any info let me know.
Thanks in advance.
 
Sounds pretty normal, because SCII is still taxing your CPU and GPU which in turn also taxes the fans which also takes a hit on the battery not to mention your hard drive is probably constantly spinning. . . If you turn the screen brightness down to say 20% and turn the backlit keyboard completely off you might be able to squeeze 30 more mins out of it. . .
 
Huh. Damn. I would imagine that it should last longer. Ya, 20% screen brightness might be possible, except with the glossy display glare is a biatch. O, and ya the keyboard backlight was all the way off. Damn. Guess this just means I need to bring my power cord with me where ever I go now.
 
Yeah, that's normal. Batteries in laptop is a bit of a scam really. Well. In so far as it gives you the impression you can use the machine without power. You can, but with a limited range of functions; ie. works great for reading email or whatever. But serious gaming, alas no.
 
I can usually get over two hours on my 13" MBP. I have an SSD and usually am playing offline with my airport turned off, no keyboard backlight, and screen on medium brightness.
 
shoeshine said:
I can usually get over two hours on my 13" MBP. I have an SSD and usually am playing offline with my airport turned off, no keyboard backlight, and screen on medium brightness.
Click to expand...

That because you have an SSD(which makes a HUGE difference). . . The airport being off doesnt hurt either
 
Patmian212 said:
That because you have an SSD(which makes a HUGE difference). . . The airport being off doesnt hurt either
Click to expand...

The SSD makes very little difference. It's because that fella has a MBP13" which had a 320m (an integrated solution) which uses way less power than the 330m.


I once did the exact same thing as OP and got little less than hour and a half on a 15" with the same specs.


Remember. The 330m drains a lot of power. Not to mention turbo boosting the ix chips do when they get taxed.

It's perfectly normal for you to be getting that kind of milage doing what you are doing XD
 
Meever said:
The SSD makes very little difference. It's because that fella has a MBP13" which had a 320m (an integrated solution) which uses way less power than the 330m.


I once did the exact same thing as OP and got little less than hour and a half on a 15" with the same specs.


Remember. The 330m drains a lot of power. Not to mention turbo boosting the ix chips do when they get taxed.

It's perfectly normal for you to be getting that kind of milage doing what you are doing XD
Click to expand...


I was under the impression that SSD having no(or very few) moving parts helped save a ton of battery life. . . Have I been misinformed :eek:?
 
If Apple had put a real GPU in your notebook, you probably would have only got about 20 minutes. :p

But that's crazy, you've already lowered your settings and so on, so the only thing left is your brightness. There's also lowering your resolution if you haven't already, that might give you some more time. Going to a SSD would help save battery life on the initial load, but not really while gaming.
 
sounds about right OP. I had an actual gaming laptop before, 15" Sager with 260m and 2.8C2D and if I tried gaming on battery - it'd get no more than 30-45 minutes hahah, normal internet use I'd get 3 hours... so yeah.. your battery is okay.
 
You don't play intensive games on a laptop without it plugged into the wall. Full stop. That said, 90 minutes for a just released game, is pretty good.

Patmian212 said:
I was under the impression that SSD having no(or very few) moving parts helped save a ton of battery life. . . Have I been misinformed :eek:?
Click to expand...

Going from an HDD to an SSD would save you a watt or two of power savings. Compare this against a 35W CPU with a 23W GPU going full bore and it won't make much difference.

Now, in a low power state, that 1-2 watt savings would be a larger proportion of the total system power usage, so would improve battery life in that mode more.
 
I'm curious as to why you thought you would get more life on battery while gaming? Did someone misinform you?

With that said, an 1hr + is very good. I get about the same while playing Minecraft on battery and that's just Minecraft.

As its been stated SSD's have very little impact on on battery life.
 
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