Any tips for reducing power consumption on laptop?

[Roger Ramjet]

This emulator runs stunningly well on my non-gaming laptop. Mind blown to be playing the likes of ICO on it.

I've been monitoring the power use of all applications and games on my new laptop, to get a feel for how long I can run various things on battery.

PCSX2 wants about 12.5 watts at default settings. That's a small price to pay for all that it's doing, I'm sure, but it's also pretty high.

Can anyone offer any advice about what config settings are likely to give the biggest gains in terms of reducing power draw? I guess they will mean less fps / graphical quality, but I'm willing to experiment if I can make big gains.

I guess the answers will be very similar to "how do I get this running on a low end pc", but possibly there are some subtle / clever differences.

All I know is there can be quite a difference, e.g. I changed from the default "DX11 hardware" to "DX11 software" rendering engine and the power draw went up by a few watts, so I set it back to hardware!

Current emulator settings: Default.

My Laptop:
Windows 11
i7-1165G7 CPU, Iris Xe integrated graphics
16GB Ram
Display: 2560x1600

Thanks in advance...

[vsub]

Your laptop(the cpu specifically)is more than enough for almost any game but that gpu is tanking your performance.
PCSX2 runs just fine on my almost twice weaker cpu(i7-6700hq which is also purposely limited to 2.5gb)but my gpu is much banner than yours

There isn't much you can do

[sportster]

This emulator runs stunningly well on my non-gaming laptop. Mind blown to be playing the likes of ICO on it.

I've been monitoring the power use of all applications and games on my new laptop, to get a feel for how long I can run various things on battery.

PCSX2 wants about 12.5 watts at default settings. That's a small price to pay for all that it's doing, I'm sure, but it's also pretty high.

Can anyone offer any advice about what config settings are likely to give the biggest gains in terms of reducing power draw? I guess they will mean less fps / graphical quality, but I'm willing to experiment if I can make big gains.

I guess the answers will be very similar to "how do I get this running on a low end pc", but possibly there are some subtle / clever differences.

All I know is there can be quite a difference, e.g. I changed from the default "DX11 hardware" to "DX11 software" rendering engine and the power draw went up by a few watts, so I set it back to hardware!

Current emulator settings: Default.

My Laptop:
Windows 11
i7-1165G7 CPU, Iris Xe integrated graphics
16GB Ram
Display: 2560x1600

Thanks in advance...

12.5 watts to emulate ps2 games on computer is already a steal. The ps2 console itself consume about 50 watts.
I personally would prefer to play games on a desktop despite it require more power for better playable performance.

[Roger Ramjet]

12.5 watts to emulate ps2 games on computer is already a steal. The ps2 console itself consume about 50 watts.
I personally would prefer to play games on a desktop despite it require more power for better playable performance.

Agreed, it's very impressive when you compare it to the real thing! Just shows how far hardware has advanced, and how well PCSX2 is optimised.

I've been doing some more accurate tests, and working out the power drain of various applications, separate to the power drain of the laptop screen etc.

When running ICO, PCSX2 wants 10 watts, and when running V-Rally 3, it wants 16 watts.

Even the higher number puts it just within the limits I'm comfortable with for total load on the battery, which is about 19 watts. Basically I like the idea of never doing anything which would take less than 4 hours to completely drain a full battery. I want it to last a long time.

Over five and a half hours of ICO on a laptop with a big screen would seem miraculous back in the day.

One emulator that has really blown me away for efficiency is ReDream, the Dreamcast emulator. That never wants much more than 5 watts, no matter what game it's running. That's only a bit more than a ZX Spectrum emulator!

---

Your laptop(the cpu specifically)is more than enough for almost any game but that gpu is tanking your performance.
PCSX2 runs just fine on my almost twice weaker cpu(i7-6700hq which is also purposely limited to 2.5gb)but my gpu is much banner than yours

There isn't much you can do

I've tried a few things and it looks like you're right, there isn't really much I can do to reduce the power drain while maintaining good quality.

It plays all games I've tried perfectly. It's not that it struggles, it's just that I'm trying to load up my laptop with extremely power-efficient entertainment

[evajasmin1]

1. Change your sleep settings. When your laptop goes to sleep it uses less energy Lower your screen brightness. Make use of battery saving mode. Keep your laptop cool. Turn off bluetooth. Turn off your device and keep it unplugged.  Turn on optimised charging.