Does a high refresh rate impact the battery life?

[IAmAndre]

Hi guys,

 

I'm considering buying an MSI Stealth laptop and it comes with several configurations. While the battery has the same size, the refresh rate and the components differ. Therefore I want to know if the simple fact of having a 300Hz or 144Hz can impact the battery life. I'm asking because I'm definitely not buying it for gaming, but I will occasionally use After Effects (maybe Unity at some point) and play occasionally so I don't need the high refresh rate. Would capping the frame rate on Windows have the same effect on battery life as having a regular 60Hz display?

 

Thanks

[kelvinhall05]

Yes, display refresh rate will affect battery life, but you're getting a gaming laptop so clearly battery life is not a huge concern lol

[DoctorNick]

Thats a good question. I doubt it scales that well but you have to try it out.

[IAmAndre]

1 minute ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Yes, display refresh rate will affect battery life, but you're getting a gaming laptop so clearly battery life is not a huge concern lol

It has a 99.9Wh battery. That's as big as it can get. I'm getting with a core i7 and a 2060, which may be disabled. So I hope that such a big battery with no GPU should give me at least 6 hours, which wouldn't be too bad.

[IAmAndre]

I'm still curious to know if capping it on Windows reduces power consumption. I know it's the case on Android phones.

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, IAmAndre said:

I'm still curious to know if capping it on Windows reduces power consumption. I know it's the case on Android phones.

The display would have to support variable refresh rate or whatever which would normally be a heavily advertised feature.

 

Capping framerate will not change that refresh rate. I can almost guarantee the display will always run at 144/300Hz.

[IAmAndre]

1 minute ago, kelvinhall05 said:

The display would have to support variable refresh rate or whatever which would normally be a heavily advertised feature.

 

Capping framerate will not change that refresh rate. I can almost guarantee the display will always run at 144/300Hz.

Interesting. Well at least running at a lower frame rate means less stress on the components so I guess this would reduce the power consumption in some way?

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, IAmAndre said:

Interesting. Well at least running at a lower frame rate means less stress on the components so I guess this would reduce the power consumption in some way?

Would probably be a negligible difference.

 

 

If you want max battery life with minimum hassle just completely disable the dGPU (only when on battery, obviously) and set Windows to "max battery life" power plan or whatever it is called (along with normal tricks like turning off radios when not in use, lowering screen brightness, etc).

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Would probably be a negligible difference.

Pfft, no. Lower framerate = lower power-draw, ergo longer battery-life, rather obviously. That's why e.g. NVIDIA Geforce Experience and the likes also offer to automatically cap framerates to some specific value if the laptop is running on battery.

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, WereCatf said:

Pfft, no. Lower framerate = lower power-draw, ergo longer battery-life, rather obviously. That's why e.g. NVIDIA Geforce Experience and the likes also offer to automatically cap framerates to some specific value if the laptop is running on battery.

In games, yes. But not Windows and just basic web browsing or whatever.

 

 

Which is exactly what OP was asking about:

18 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Would capping the frame rate on Windows have the same effect on battery life as having a regular 60Hz display?

 

[WereCatf]

Just now, kelvinhall05 said:

In games, yes. But not Windows and just basic web browsing or whatever.

I didn't even know it's possible to cap framerate in Windows. I just cap clock-frequency instead when on battery.

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, WereCatf said:

I didn't even know it's possible to cap framerate in Windows. I just cap clock-frequency instead when on battery.

Well I don't use Windows so I can't comment on that lol. But I do cap my clockspeed on my X260 to 2.6GHz instead of 3.4GHz or whatever max boost is when plugged in. Along with a mild undervolt I can get over 10 hours of max brightness YouTube playback from the combined 72Wh and 24Wh batteries.

[jaslion]

Higher refresh rate = higher power draw. For example the asus g14 had a bug where on battery it would keep running at 144hz and it lost 4 hours of battery life because of that. What laptop is this? 6 hours out of a big boi gaming laptop is still hard to do. Also not all laptops lower the refresh rate down to 60hz or at all on battery so I would need to know the laptop for that so I can go find it out.

 

Also just get the 144hz screen the difference between that and like a 300hz screen is so so small you won't notice it and get a lot of extra battery life out of it if it can't lower the display refresh enough.

 

Also gaming on a laptop battery flat out gets you max 2 hours even on a 100w battery. Sure limiting framerate and all will help but around 2 hours is about it.

[Kilrah]

14 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

I didn't even know it's possible to cap framerate in Windows. I just cap clock-frequency instead when on battery.

You don't "cap the framerate in Windows", you just set the display to run at 60Hz in display properties, done.