system components and their effects on battery life

[meanburrito920]

I was looking at the System76 laptops and was wondering- how much does adding a graphics card take off of battery life in general? And how much more battery life does a 9 cell battery produce than a 6 cell?

[farruinn]

I was looking at the System76 laptops and was wondering- how much does adding a graphics card take off of battery life in general? And how much more battery life does a 9 cell battery produce than a 6 cell?

I only have one System76 laptop, a Serval Performance, so I can't provide a comparison but I can share my experience. It comes standard with an nVidia card and 9 cell battery. I'm getting roughly 4 hours of battery life which is better than their advertised 3 hours. This may mean that I'm in a lucky minority, but hopefully it might answer your question.

I don't know a whole lot about energy consumption of different components, but I would think the biggest drain would be from the 15.4" screen which is very bright or the DVD drive if you have a disc in.

[thomasaaron]

We are putting together a battery benchmarking tool that will help us to give better answers to questions like these. For now, though, we can only offer the estimated battery life mentioned on our website.