OT: Battery Life in Athlon 64 Laptop?

RalphM wrote on 12/19/2005, 2:43 PM
I've got a high class problem: Due to family trips of two weeks length at Thanksgiving time, I got very backed up on customer orders and my wife insists on giving me a laptop for Christmas to take on trips so this does not happen again (I've disappeared into my studio for the past two weeks).

I've pretty much settled on an HP 15.4 inch widescreen. there are two very comparable models - one having an Intel Centrino Pentium M chip and the other an Athlon 64 3200.

I'm wondering about the battery life on the Athlons - they tout an intelligent processor speed control.

Any observations would be welcome.

Thanks and Merry Christmas!

RalphM

Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 12/19/2005, 2:55 PM
I have a Gateway 7510gx (A64 3700+) and I can get 2 hours because when not plugged in, it drops your speed down by about half. I havent regretted my purchase one bit.
Coursedesign wrote on 12/19/2005, 4:03 PM
I have a Compaq Athlon64 3200 laptop for portable Vegas use, with a 15.4" screen (that is very good).

Battery life is abt 1 1/2 hrs if you're doing heavy crunching, much better if you let it throttle down.

Centrino will use less power, and provide less power... :O)
Harold Brown wrote on 12/19/2005, 4:10 PM

I have a HP Athlon64 3200 laptop with a 15.4" screen (zv6100). I ran it on battery power once or twice and as I recall it was about 2 hours but not heavy use. I reduced the brightness of the screen and walked away a few times to do other things.
gdstaples wrote on 12/19/2005, 10:09 PM
I have a Gateway AMD Athlon 4000+ 15" Widescreen and get just a bit over two hours.

Duncan
RalphM wrote on 12/22/2005, 7:47 AM
Thank you all for the replies,

I really had to consider whether battery life was a big factor for me, and I came to the conclusion that it was not. If it becomes so, I'll just buy a spare battery (and a cart to lug all the weight around airports :-)

My Athlon 64 is under the tree - darn, 3 more days to wait. I'll get to try it out as a mobile platform on Tuesday when I make the 6 hour drive to Pittsburgh (My wife doesn't yet know she's doing the driving).

This is my first non-Intel processor since the first PC purchase back in 1986.

RalphM
p@mast3rs wrote on 12/22/2005, 8:04 AM
Prepared to b very happy as in my experience, AMD has always outperformed Intel and the gravy is the lower cost as well. Youll be very happy come Christmas morning, I promise you that much. :) Enjoy.