Hearthstone- Kills battery fast

[starstreak]

Anybody tried this game? Its a card battle game based on WoW. On my default settings (balanced) it makes the laptop HOT and the fan is on full. And within 10mins, I was from 100% battery to like 85%.
I lowered my power settings to battery savings, and lowered the graphics card properties (intel gfx card icon) to save battery vs max performance. And when I did that same test again from a 100% charge, the unit still gets very warm, fan is on the lowest setting, and after 15mins I was at around 76%. battery.

I had the Task manager running in background, and the CPU didn't spike over 1Ghz. What exactly about this game is so battery draining? Any way I could lower the useage anymore?

 

[the_new_normal]

Most likely it is straining the integrated GPU, which uses a fair amount of power.

The best way to reduce that strain is to reduce the resolution, say to 720. Other graphics settings from within the game can reduce the strain further.

GPU-Z is a good little program to monitor what's going on. Click the 'log to file' box on the second tab then fire up your game.
GPU-Z Video card GPU Information Utility

Let us know how you get on.

 

[starstreak]

Ah. I thought by just choosing the lowest gfx setting for the card would help but I guess it it using the gpu to the fullest. Weird. I didn't this this game required such horsepower. Lol

 

[GoodBytes]

Turn on V-Sync, and set the "Maximum processor state" to 0%, and the minimum to 0%, as well. You can find those options in the advance panel of the power plan.
Why?

V-sync will ensure that the game wont' be running above 60fps. If it runs above 60fps, the Intel integrated graphics will just get more hot and consume more power.
The display can only output 60Hz, so 60fps (1Hz = 1fps)

Forcing the CPU to be locked at minimum speed (~750MHz), will help make the CPU be the bottleneck, forcing the GPU to wait and not draw, which will lead that your game will run at lower frame rate, resulting in a reduction of heat produce and power consumption of the system.

Basically, the Intel integrated graphic is very inefficient when being pushed. It's the opposite of a discrete graphics card, where they are power consuming when not doing anything, but when you push them, their performance per Watts greatly increases, boosting their efficiency.

 

[starstreak]

Interesting. I'll try it once I get home. Thx!

 

[horseflesh]

Thanks GoodBytes!

 

[Genie]

Did those settings help?

 

[starstreak]

It helped a bit. I think its just poor programming on the games part. It still drops about 1-2% every 2 mins. So if in play a 15min fame, battery will be from 100% down to 80-73%. Depends. And the game sucks big time when it come to handling touch or pen touches. Playing on my wife's ipad works great. On the surface, sometimes it registers touches as a reason to select and use. When all I was doing is touching a card to read information on it. Or it'll select a card and not release the click when I lift my finger off the page.

 

[Zkyevolved]

I play this game. The on full 1080 it drains fast and the fans turn on. I dropped the resolution and changed it to low detail, which for a card game, it still looks the same to me and my lay eyes I suppose. Now no fan, and CONSIDERABLY less warm than before No complaints. Battery says I can get around 4 hours of gameplay with these settings.

 

[jollywombat]

It helped a bit. I think its just poor programming on the games part. It still drops about 1-2% every 2 mins. So if in play a 15min fame, battery will be from 100% down to 80-73%. Depends. And the game sucks big time when it come to handling touch or pen touches. Playing on my wife's ipad works great. On the surface, sometimes it registers touches as a reason to select and use. When all I was doing is touching a card to read information on it. Or it'll select a card and not release the click when I lift my finger off the page.

I tried HS, interesting little game. It however is not written on the windows platform with touch in mind at all, so you will experience these sort of issues unfortunately vs the IOS version which has only touch as an input. As a suggestion, you might try out Gestureworks Gameplay application and create a profile in it for Hearthstone, it allows a number of applications to work far better utilizing the touchscreen.

 

[Philtastic]

The best way to save battery while playing games (which will also hurt performance, thus lower settings might be required) is to both do what GoodBytes said about limiting the processor in your power settings as well as limit your framerate but to also limit your Intel integrated GPU by changing the power setting "Intel(R) Graphics Settings" to "Maximum Battery". As an example, Diablo 3 on low-mid settings at 720p will take roughly 2 hours to drain my battery with Intel GPU set to max battery and CPU set to max out at 50% whereas with GPU set to high performance and 100% CPU, it will go in roughly 45-55 min.

The bottom line is that the Intel integrated is not energy efficient so you'll still have terrible battery life if running any game (even Candy Crush in your web browser) but you can stretch it a bit further with those power setting changes. If you can't limit the framerate natively in game (eg. Diablo 3 has an in game framerate limiter which is awesome for reducing heat and battery usage), then you need to limit it by how fast the hardware runs.