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Hardware Core Duo Battery Drain Bug Demystified
Sven Olsen (Blog) - February 13, 2006 3:23 PM
Print 23 comment(s) - last by jilchev.. on Feb 15 at 5:11 AM
Grossly incomplete reports previously stated that Intel's Core Duo was flawed; today the missing information is revealed

Several weeks ago, tech tabloid TGDaily reported that the Intel Core Duo platform was flawed by a battery draining bug. In their tests, they used a "standard technician's tool" -- which is still unidentified -- and found that battery life was reduced over 40% when using certain devices with Intel's latest mobility platform. In a conclusion, they stated that the bug they witnessed was a Core Duo issue only. However, today AnandTech has released an extensive report which indicates otherwise.

Testing with five different notebooks from various manufacturers, AnandTech discovered that the claimed Core Duo bug was not an isolated occurrence and in fact appeared on all the tested platforms including the notebooks based on Sonoma as well as those using single core CPUs. They also reported that Microsoft has a quick fix for the USB/battery drain issue but at the time the fix is only a temporary solution until something more permanent can be issued.

From the article:

[The] Napa notebook lost 17% of its battery life due to the bug, while the Sonoma based W5A lost 25.5%.  Once again, implying that this is a Core Duo issue alone is simply incorrect; the problem affects Sonoma platforms just as much, if not more, than Core Duo platforms.  Based on the results we've seen in our perfmon analysis we tend to believe Microsoft's assessment that the problem would exist on any system that spent any time in C3 or lower power states.

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O....K.....
By Plasmoid on 2/13/2006 6:27:43 PM , Rating: 1
Alright... thanks for the update... but next time you guys should really keep your industry trash talk to yourself.

I dont mind a bit of gloating on your part considering Tom's did more then their fair share of gloating when they uncovered this, but cmon this article reads like part of it was written by a 10 year old who got insulted by toms hardware staff.

And how come if this is not a Core bug it was never discovered before... and never reported on this site.

"Grossly incomplete reports previously stated that Intel's Core Duo was flawed"

Yes... peliminary reports, which were later updated when Intel commented on the matter and Microsoft owned up. Out of interest your reports were surely even more grossly incomplete for missing this bug since the Pentium M came out.

Speaking of Tabloids well done dailytech... your well on your way to becoming a grade F british tabloid yourself.




RE: O....K.....
By The Cheeba on 2/13/2006 6:32:26 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Yes... peliminary reports, which were later updated when Intel commented on the matter and Microsoft owned up. Out of interest your reports were surely even more grossly incomplete for missing this bug since the Pentium M came out.


Cept the reports were done on beta drivers, and that tom specifically determined the bug was on core duo -- it wasn't. go anand for at least debunking tom's constant drivel.


RE: O....K.....
By Knish on 2/13/2006 7:29:37 PM , Rating: 3
Maybe youre doing this on purpose, and maybe your not.

quote:
And how come if this is not a Core bug it was never discovered before... and never reported on this site.


The bug only showed up in SP2. The article says "It is also important to note that the problem appears limited to USB 2.0 devices under Windows XP SP2 and not USB 1.x devices or USB 2.0 devices under other operating systems."

How many laptop battery tests have you seen in the last 6 months?



RE: O....K.....
By shadowzz on 2/13/2006 8:06:15 PM , Rating: 2
"I dont mind a bit of gloating on your part considering Tom's did more then their fair share of gloating when they uncovered this"

where did tomshardware gloat??? just because they did it FIRST doesnt mean they were gloating. sven must have been drunk again when he wrote this because all he does is bash tomshardware about all the storries that ANANDTECH CANT EVEN GET!

get a life


RE: O....K.....
By clubok on 2/13/2006 11:46:32 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
where did tomshardware gloat???


You seem to have missed their "industry asleep at the wheel" editorial that appeared shortly after their initial story on the bug. It's a matter of interpretation as to whether this editorial was more self-aggrandizement or criticism of the rest of the tech review sites. But one thing is for sure - it was anything but gracious.


RE: O....K.....
By clubok on 2/14/2006 12:15:33 AM , Rating: 3
In case anybody is wondering, the "gloating" editorial is here:

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/29/opinion_core_duo...

You can make up your own mind as to whether you call this gloating.


RE: O....K.....
By Knish on 2/14/2006 12:55:47 AM , Rating: 5
OK -- I had not read that article until now, and if that is not gloating I don't know what is.

"Maybe everyone just had a bad day with their Core Duo tests (may they grant me the same benefit of the doubt on the day I put a stone through the glasshouse window), but I think the problem is laziness . Most reviewers probably thought to themselves "Stick in the benchmarks, make sure you have a clean install of Window's for each one but let's not do more than we bloody well have to..."

gee....

yet in the same article:

"Judging by the problem, stemming from USB 2.0 device use as it does, the reason we believe we found the problem is not just our enthusiasm for what we do, but also the diligence and many hours of research we put in every product that crosses our desks. Putting in that extra bit of effort seems to have paid off this week."

incredible. Someone tipped them off 6 months ago and they just go around to publishing on it now, and then they claim the reason why only tomsharware reported it was because everyone else was too lazy? Yet they missed the part about the bug occuring on every pentium m notebook.

Yeah, thats gloating. and yet we wonder why Sevn calls them a tabloid.


bug
By goku on 2/13/2006 10:45:44 PM , Rating: 2
I saw the article on anandtech that anand wrote and it was good that he showed how it improved battery life even when there weren't devices installed. I hope microsoft fixes the bug so that this issue is entirely eliminated, seems to not work when resuming from standby. Since this bug has been revealed, I hope that it turns out there are more bugs out there to be fixed so that hopefully battery life will improve even more...




RE: bug
By NullSubroutine on 2/13/06, Rating: 0
RE: bug
By Pimpala on 2/14/2006 3:16:50 PM , Rating: 2
The fact that Toms Hardware pulled their article does not bode well for them. If they made a mistake they should just write an update article, but this is clearly bad journalism.

Not cool at all.


RE: bug
By jonkul on 2/15/2006 12:40:34 AM , Rating: 2
Last time I checked, a week ago or so, there was an update of the original article scheduled for this week. However, Anandtech has released their article before the TG update. Maybe TG/THG found out that the bug was not limited to Core Duo, maybe not, I'm afraid I don't know any details about the update. Wolfgang mentioned that there was something about it in the THG forums before the Anandtech article, but I haven't checked that.


RE: bug
By NullSubroutine on 2/15/2006 1:22:06 AM , Rating: 2
their article is up. reading it now.


Get over it
By Readmorecommentless on 2/13/06, Rating: 0
RE: Get over it
By Knish on 2/13/2006 7:24:46 PM , Rating: 5
I don't get what is with the beef. Anand says right in the comments of the article that he has no problem with TG:

quote:
Be nice guys, if it weren't for the original THG article it would've taken much longer for this investigation to even happen. I just wanted to make sure that the bug was properly characertized and even more importantly, I want to actually see a fully functional fix from Microsoft that works even out of standby.

Take care,
Anand


Journalism Ethics?
By AaronAxvig on 2/13/2006 4:26:56 PM , Rating: 2
We need some disclosure in the articles here, especially passion-provoking ones like this. Put in the articles a disclosure that DailyTech is spun off from AnandTech.

And then, because of conflicting interests, and in effort to remain a respectable reputation, do not bash TGDaily in an effort to win support for both DailyTech and AnandTech.

Besides, do you really need to steal their last remaining reader? :)




RE: Journalism Ethics?
By jilchev on 2/15/2006 5:11:09 AM , Rating: 2
Definitely not a fair-play by DailyTech ;-(

I just spotted a forum topic on Tom’s about this “news” post:

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/TG-ftopict...

(just the other point of view ;-) I guess).

BTW: I do read both of the sites and was very happy with DailyTech recently an especially the wider tech coverage they introduced recently, but do not like the tone they try to use!


TGDaily
By theubergeek on 2/13/2006 3:38:46 PM , Rating: 3
LOL!! TGDaily IS a tabloid!




RE: TGDaily
By DigitalFreak on 2/13/06, Rating: 0
internal USB devices?
By PT2006 on 2/13/2006 7:41:52 PM , Rating: 1
First of all let me say that i work for a PC manufacturer of notebooks. several of the notebooks that anand and tom tested use usb 2.0 devices internally. the asus laptop in both reviews has a USB camera attached to it that is always on. this will drain power and cause us a lot of problems while we were testing these things interally a few months ago. i don't know why none has brougth that up.




RE: internal USB devices?
By fhornmikey on 2/13/2006 10:36:43 PM , Rating: 2
Did you even read the article? They directly address this in the anandtech article and do testing with laptops with and without internal USB 2.0 devices. Please read the actual article before commenting.


_
By Mant on 2/13/2006 4:26:21 PM , Rating: 2
The National Tomquirer?




TGDaily is junk reporting...
By AppaYipYip on 2/13/2006 4:35:12 PM , Rating: 2
Thank goodness for factual, intelligent reporting from the likes of Anandtech. Once again Anandtech proves that factual reporting will always prevail.




Good work
By phaxmohdem on 2/13/2006 7:57:49 PM , Rating: 2
Great article, and excellent work, in tracking down the cause, and helping to get the message out so this gets fixed ASAP.

I read about this on Toms when they launched the article, but simply didn't care as they stated it was the Core Duo chip at fault, and that is not relevant to me. Also their editor putting down other review sites for not finding the bug first stuck a sour note with me.

Nevertheless, I'm glad that Toms pointed this bug out, and even happier that Anandtech pursued it as it should. (Probably only because Tom's pointed it out in the first place) I would love to know if this bug is present in Turion/A64 mobile platforms as well.




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