• MacBook Pro GPU is always on in Windows 7

    Friday, April 16th, 2010

    Biggs is the East Cost Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More


    MacBooks have great battery life for a few reasons, including, but not limited to, GPU switching. However, as Ubergizmo discovered, when you run Windows 7 in Bootcamp the GPU stays on all the time, essentially sucking down battery like a fiend. The 2009 MBP also had issues – the screen was too bright and the keyboard backlight was always on – but otherwise there wasn’t much of a problem.

    However, with the GPU always on you move most rendering from the power-sipping processor to the power-sucking NVIDIA GeForce 330M. Sad, but true. But what are you running Windows 7 for anyway? Quicken?

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