Recently we have talked about Apple’s new MacBook Pro line. What is interesting about the new laptops is that they can switch from Intel’s graphics chips (which are low power and thus are good for long battery life) to Nvidia’s GeForce GT 330M. The Nvidia chip uses more power, which cuts down on battery life, but it is also more powerful in terms of graphics capability. Anandtech has looked at this graphics switching technology, and found some problems with it.
The fact that the new MacBook Pro’s discrete GPU won’t power down if you have an application like Photoshop open flies in the face of this leave-your-apps-open usage model.
In other words, if you leave an application open, even if it is idle and in the background, that is using the Nvidia GPU, then your battery life will suffer. This can occur not only with Photoshop, but also sometimes happens with a web browser like Firefox.
via Apple’s 15-inch 2010 MacBook Pro: More Battery Life Tests, High Res Display Evaluated @ AnandTech .
