Battery Life and Power Consumption

With a large 19″ screen, two 7200RPM SATA drives, and two GeForce Go 7900GTX video cards, you wouldn’t expect the Alienware Aurora mALX to last very long in terms of battery. Let’s take a look at the battery life numbers.

Battery Testing Method

To test the capabilities of our laptop sample we run three battery benchmarks: Battery Eater Pro, Battery Mark 4.01, and Mobile Mark 2005. Battery Eater Pro is a benchmark that loads the system using graphics, memory, and hard drive activity. Battery Mark is an older benchmark that simulates a typical office productivity by running sessions of MS Word and Excel. Mobile Mark 2005 is a bit different and deserves a separate section below.

Testing is done with all forms of power savings disabled. This is done to give the most consistent and comparable results across multiple laptop platforms. The numbers you see in these tests are the “worst case” scenario, so expect longer battery when you properly enable power savings in Windows.

Alienware Aurora mALX 19" Gaming Notebook Review - Mobile 73

    • Asus VX1 – Intel T7400 Core 2 Duo, 2x1GB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7400 512MB
    • Asus Z96J – Intel T7600 Core 2 Duo, 2x512MB RAM, ATI Mobility X1600 256MB
    • Dell M1710Intel T2600 Core Duo, 2x1024MB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7900 GS 256MB
    • Alienware mALX – AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB
    • Alienware m9700AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB

Alienware Aurora mALX 19" Gaming Notebook Review - Mobile 74

    • Asus VX1 – Intel T7400 Core 2 Duo, 2x1GB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7400 512MB
    • Asus Z96J – Intel T7600 Core 2 Duo, 2x512MB RAM, ATI Mobility X1600 256MB
    • Dell M1710Intel T2600 Core Duo, 2x1024MB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7900 GS 256MB
    • Alienware mALX – AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB
    • Alienware m9700AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB

With the brightness turned up 50% or 100% and with the WiFi on or off, it doesn’t make much of a difference to the mALX. In all cases the mALX lasts 1 hour and 5 minutes to 1 hour and 20 minutes. It’s not like a compact notebook where you typically see 2 hours or better in battery life in continuous usage.

Of course you can play more complicated 3D games while running on batteries, just don’t expect to get more than 40 minutes with it (that’s my guess). The battery should be used to get you between places without having to shutdown the system, and to make quick computing sessions.

MobileMark is a bit of an anomaly. Like the Alienware m9700 we reviewed a few months back, we could not generate an overall MobileMark score. However, we are able to get the total running time for the test, just not the MobileMark score.

Alienware Aurora mALX 19" Gaming Notebook Review - Mobile 75

    • Asus VX1 – Intel T7400 Core 2 Duo, 2x1GB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7400 512MB
    • Asus Z96J – Intel T7600 Core 2 Duo, 2x512MB RAM, ATI Mobility X1600 256MB
    • Dell M1710Intel T2600 Core Duo, 2x1024MB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7900 GS 256MB
    • Alienware mALX – AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB
    • Alienware m9700AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB

The mALX definitely does not win big in the battery life department.

Alienware Aurora mALX 19" Gaming Notebook Review - Mobile 76

    • Asus VX1 – Intel T7400 Core 2 Duo, 2x1GB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7400 512MB
    • Asus Z96J – Intel T7600 Core 2 Duo, 2x512MB RAM, ATI Mobility X1600 256MB
    • Dell M1710 – Intel T2600 Core Duo, 2x1024MB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7900 GS 256MB
    • Alienware mALX – AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB
    • Alienware m9700 – AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB

It’s interesting to see comsumption with wireless networking and during idle practically the same in all systems. Wireless only appears to consume an extra 1 to 2 watts more electricity.

Alienware Aurora mALX 19" Gaming Notebook Review - Mobile 77


    • Asus VX1 – Intel T7400 Core 2 Duo, 2x1GB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7400 512MB
    • Asus Z96J – Intel T7600 Core 2 Duo, 2x512MB RAM, ATI Mobility X1600 256MB
    • Dell M1710Intel T2600 Core Duo, 2x1024MB RAM, NVIDIA Go 7900 GS 256MB
    • Alienware mALX – AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB
    • Alienware m9700AMD Turion 64 ML-44, 2×1024 RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB

In terms of battery consumption, the Alienware mALX consumes about 10 watts more power than the Alienware Aurora m9700 in normal computing activities. But when you turn on the games, the mALX sky-rockets to a 171 Watts which makes the mALX the hungriest notebook we’ve reviewed here on PC Perspective.

« PreviousNext »