Power throttling modes

[petvas72]

Which power mode are you using when on power and when on battery?

Why not use the "best performance" mode when on power? Is there a reason why someone would select a different mode? I understand that when on battery the laptop should try to save battery life, but why throttle when on power?
Any comments or thoughts on this?

Regarding battery life, does anyone know in which mode most tests are being performed? Are the testers using the recommended (default) setting?

 

[JaimitoFrog]

I keep my to default for now. I can only guess when plugged in, max performance setting may be louder? Never tried it yet.

 

[petvas72]

It will be louder only if you play high performance games. Only then. I have tried encoding videos and I hear nothing. The system stays quiet.

 

[v0lum3]

Im using "balanced" on battery, seems the best balance of batterylife and performance. Plugged in, im using "better performance", seems to be a good balance between noise and performance when for example playing games.

Cheers!

 

[petvas72]

I am using balanced in all modes and when I want more performance I switch to best performance when the laptop is plugged in and better performance when on battery.

 

[yannickschev]

Can we disable the GPU altogether to safe battery? There doesn't seem to be an NVIDIA control panel shipped with it like in book 1.

 

[Mattemt294]

I am using best performance on power and recommended on battery. The best performance mode means it wont throttle the cpu or gpu if the system needs to use it.

So if you are playing a game or doing some heavy work on the surface book, it wont run as well unless you set it to best, but best does drain battery so if you are unplugged and you don't need the extra boost in performance for what you are doing, you should turn it down.

As far as Nvidia, download the NVidia GeForce experience from NVidia's website. It will add the control panel to the right click menu on the desktop and will also give you the most recent drivers. This app also optimizes the game settings in any game you download for the card and system as well.