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How to measure and compare battery power consumption between Linux and Windows

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  • How to measure and compare battery power consumption between Linux and Windows

    Hi,
    I am finding that on my system.. ubuntu 13.10 is consuming much more power than Windows 8... (I get about 3.5 hours of battery on Windows and 1 hour on ubuntu)
    From googling, this might be as a result of a combination of factors (biggest of which, is nVidia Optimus).. I would like to try out different methods and see how my power consumption and system temperature is affected. In order to do that I need to benchmark power consumption on windows and ubuntu and see how changes i make affect the performance.

    I am new to phoronix. What test cases and methods would you suggest in order to benchmark and measure power consumption and CPU/GPU temp on both my ubuntu and windows partitions.

    Thanks in advance,

    nedR

  • #2
    Originally posted by nedR View Post
    Hi,
    I am finding that on my system.. ubuntu 13.10 is consuming much more power than Windows 8... (I get about 3.5 hours of battery on Windows and 1 hour on ubuntu)
    From googling, this might be as a result of a combination of factors (biggest of which, is nVidia Optimus).. I would like to try out different methods and see how my power consumption and system temperature is affected. In order to do that I need to benchmark power consumption on windows and ubuntu and see how changes i make affect the performance.

    I am new to phoronix. What test cases and methods would you suggest in order to benchmark and measure power consumption and CPU/GPU temp on both my ubuntu and windows partitions.

    Thanks in advance,

    nedR
    Under Linux you can set the MONITOR=gpu.temp,sys.power,cpu.temp environment variable prior to running PTS to monitor those sensors during benchmarking (run phoronix-test-suite system-sensors to see all sensors) and they will be rendered with whatever benchmarks you decide to run. But that isn't supported under Windows since there isn't any standardized interfaces for reading this information on Windows.
    Michael Larabel
    https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Michael View Post
      Under Linux you can set the MONITOR=gpu.temp,sys.power,cpu.temp environment variable prior to running PTS to monitor those sensors during benchmarking (run phoronix-test-suite system-sensors to see all sensors) and they will be rendered with whatever benchmarks you decide to run. But that isn't supported under Windows since there isn't any standardized interfaces for reading this information on Windows.
      Thanks for reply,

      Okay. Sorry; I am new to this. Which tests do you suggest I run? There is no other way to measure power consumption in Windows using Phoronix? There must be because the Phoronix blog has posted comparisons of power consumption between Ubuntu and Windows before..

      Thanks again,
      nedR

      edit: Actually, you have done a post on Phoronix comparing power consumption between Windows and Ubuntu (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=windows_ubuntu_pow&num=5)
      Last edited by nedR; 08 December 2013, 12:51 PM. Reason: corrected typo

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      • #4
        Sorry, I didn't notice that you used a wattmeter in that case.

        Its sad that Microsoft doesn't provide the necessary interface to access the data. Although, their Joulemeter project seems to be doing just that (https://research.microsoft.com/en-us...-daf55565f794/. I would like to try it out but it doesn't seem to support Windows 8.

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        • #5
          Measure battery percentage instead

          Hello again,

          I now understand you can't measure power consumption directly in Windows, but I still am interested in measuring and comparing battery life in Ubuntu and Windows.

          Could you suggest test suite or configuration that will show the difference in battery percentage (and if possible battery life in hours) before and after running it.

          Thanks for your time,

          Nidal

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