AMD proposes new way to test laptop battery life

In a blog post Nigel Dessau, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD, proposed the adoption of 3DMark06 to test the battery life of laptops. Dessau points out most PC battery metrics are achieved by testing the system with MobileMark 2007, an application that reportedly utilizes less than 5 percent of your PC, and many PC makers inflate the score by deactivating WiFi for the test.

If I want to know how long my battery is going to last, I want to know how long it’s going to last with me using it, not with it idle or doing nothing.

For this reason, we propose that the industry needs another test to measure battery life, and we would like to propose adoption of the industry-standard 3DMark06 benchmark. The reason I like the sound of 3DMark06 is that it uses more graphics, it runs on Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista, and, most importantly, it runs the machine at a higher overall system utilization than other industry-standard benchmarks.

AMD did some comparisons with three AMD and three Intel-based notebooks in 3DMark06 and MobileMark 2007, you can check it out over here. It shouldn't surprise you that the 3DMark06 figures make AMD-based notebooks look like a better alternative to Intel-based notebooks.

WSJ talked to an Intel spokeswoman and heard the chip giant isn't really interested in AMD's proposal:

Intel doesn’t seem too inclined to converse about the topic in this fashion. “There are many ways to measure battery life,” a spokeswoman for the company says in an email. “We believe the best way to determine how to measure battery life is by making proposals and debating it in industry consortiums and not via blog post.”