16. How Do Powermizer Settings Influence Battery Life?

To generate a steady 3D load, we looped the four game scenes of 3D Mark 2001SE until the battery gave out. We also used Mobilemark 2002 to double-check our initial results. The display brightness level was always set at around 100 Nist.

The Sager D9860 is obviously not a marathon runner in the world of notebooks. However, blaming the GPU would not be fair, since the 2D applications of Mobilemark 2002 do not demand much from the GeForce Go 6800. It is in fact the 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 Prescott that consumes large amounts of energy even when running idle. Evidence of this can be found by observing that the CPU fans start up frequently in order to keep the system alive. Let's also not forget the huge 17" display, which naturally consumes more energy than a smaller one.

Speaking of the CPU fans, we also need to comment on the background noise they generate, which might drive some users up the wall. We heard the GPU fan going from time to time, too, but this one is a rather quiet affair.