Graphics and Gaming Performance
3DMark TimeSpy
The graphics scores plummet as soon as you switch to battery power. You go from all the way up to 33-37 FPS to 10-11 FPS. The CPU performance isn’t much affected though. Furthermore, going from silent to performance mode doesn’t affect the frame rates at all.
Here, you can see why the above results were produced. On AC power, the CPU runs at 4.3GHz constantly while the GPU core and memory clocks also run around 1.5GHz. Upon switching to battery (silent), the GPU core and memory clocks drop to 1GHz and 200MHz, respectively while the CPU frequency drops to 1.4GHz as seen in earlier tests.
Switching to performance mode on the battery does push the GPU core clock to 1.2GHz and the memory to 1.5GHz, but strangely the frame rates are unaffected. Overall, the GPU core falls from 1.5GHz to 1GHz regardless of the performance preset on the battery. Keep in mind that this is the RTX 2060 Max-Q we’re talking about here.
3DMark FireStrike
Firestrike shows identical performance trends with the GPU core clock dropping from 1600MHz under AC power to 1275MHz on battery (performance mode), with the scores once again dropping significantly on battery power.
Gaming Performance
The CPU and GPU behaved just like 3DMark in gaming workloads under power and battery. Ergo, games were unplayable on battery regardless of which preset you choose or profile you set the laptop to. Here are the benchmarks:
On battery, the frame rates dropped to 20 FPS in the best performing game (Deus Ex) with single-digit lows. The Division 2 and Assassins’ Creed also saw averages of around 15-18 FPS with similar lows.
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