Gaming laptops often experience a significant drop in performance when they're not plugged in, leading to frame rates that can plummet by dozens of fps. Fortunately, by making some adjustments to your system and game settings, you can still enjoy a smoother gaming experience.
Understanding Power Supply Limitations
The primary issue lies in the power supply. Laptop batteries typically deliver between 40 to 90 watts, whereas a wall charger can provide anywhere from 100 to 200 watts or more. This extra power allows components such as the GPU and CPU to operate more efficiently, resulting in a much smoother gaming experience.
Power Profiles and Performance Impact
When using battery power, the operating system automatically switches to a low-power or balanced power profile. This change reduces both the frame rate and the screen refresh rate. There are safety reasons behind these restrictions, as drawing too much power from the battery can lead to overheating and battery damage. To prevent overheating, laptops also throttle the CPU and GPU when running on battery.
Testing Performance Differences
For instance, testing conducted on the Alienware 16 (2026) while playing Cyberpunk 2077 showed a stark contrast in performance. When connected to a power source with default graphics settings and a native resolution of 2560×1600, the game ran at approximately 110-120 fps while walking and 90-100 fps during driving in the city. However, once unplugged, the frame rate dropped to the 70s while walking and around 55 fps on the highway. This illustrates a decrease of 30-50 fps simply due to the change in power source.
Improving Battery Gaming Performance
Although the Alienware 16 is a robust gaming laptop capable of high fps even when unplugged, the 30 fps drop is still substantial, highlighting the real difference between gaming plugged in versus on battery. Keep in mind that the battery cannot deliver enough wattage for peak gaming performance. However, there are several steps you can take to enhance your gaming experience while on battery:
- Click on the battery icon in the taskbar and set the power mode to Best Performance.
- If your laptop features an Nvidia RTX GPU, consider disabling BatteryBoost or increasing the frame rate cap in GeForce Experience or the Nvidia application.
- Access your laptop's manufacturer-specific application, such as Asus Armoury Crate, Razer Synapse, or Lenovo Vantage, and switch the operation mode from Eco/Silent to manual or performance mode.
- In the Nvidia Control Panel, you can set custom frame rate limits to manage CPU and GPU usage as needed.
- To conserve battery life, lower the screen refresh rate from a high value like 144Hz to 60Hz and reduce screen brightness to about 50% or less. Turning off RGB lights can also save power.
- Disconnect unnecessary peripherals and close unused applications to further optimize performance.
- In-game, consider reducing the game resolution, shadow quality, and graphics settings to lessen the workload on your laptop. Limiting the maximum fps in game settings can also help maintain stable performance.
While the best practice remains to keep your gaming laptop plugged in for optimal performance, these tips will help you achieve better results when using battery power. Although it won't be as efficient as when connected, your overall gaming experience will be smoother.
Source: https://telset.id/how-to/cara-meningkatkan-performa-gaming-laptop-saat-pakai-baterai
