Asus Z71V - Performance drops when plugged in - solved

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I have a Asus Z71V based laptop. I've used both Ubuntu and Kubuntu on it (currently Kubuntu), and in both cases, the performance of the machine in running videos, displaying graphic intensive screensavers, etc has dropped quite significantly whenever the machine is plugged into the wall.

I have my power manager set to dynamic for both wall and battery, but I've tried every setting and the result is the same. If i'm in the middle of a video w/ AC in, it'll have choppy playback, but if i take the plug out of the back, it immediately becomes quite smooth in playback.

I use the nvidia drivers (proprietary in Ubuntu, glx-new install by automatix in Kubuntu). The machine has a NVidia 6600 Go, Pentium M 2.13, 2GB RAM, and a 7200 RPM drive. In windows and in (K)Ubuntu on battery power, the system is quite capable of flawless HD playback, yet plugged in, it cant even play a DVD under (K)Ubuntu.

Anyone have an idea of what might be causing these problems?

[askrieger]

Re: Asus Z71V - Performance drops when plugged in

My initial thought was that you have hardware problem with your AC power supply, but, if I understand you correctly, you don't see this problem on AC under windoze. If that's the case, I'd be suspicious of your power management settings. I'd set them for high performance when your on AC and power conservation on battery.

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Re: Asus Z71V - Performance drops when plugged in

Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the problem. I have tried dynamic, powersave, and performance for AC mode and it doesn't fix the problem. I also tried running the laptop directly with AC (without any battery) and also after charging the battery the whole way and it still doesn't work right.

I'm a little suspicious of my ac adapter, as it is clearly a piece of junk, but again, HD playback works fin in WinXP, so I see no reason why it shouldn't work in (K)Ubuntu.

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Re: Asus Z71V - Performance drops when plugged in - solved

Someone on the ubuntu forums had a similar laptop with a similar issue and was able to help me fix the issue. Installing the 386 version of the kernel in adept package manager and booting into it instead of generic solved the problem. The 386 kernel integrates much better with my system.