What is the battery life difference between the 1st and the new 3rd gen hdmi expansion cards?

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I was wondering if there was a significant difference of battery life between the 1st and 3rd gen HDMI expansion cards, and want to ask if someone else knows or if there is a framework engineer or employee that can provide us with additional info

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Hi and welcome to the forum

It’s not just the HDMI anyway I’m sure the HDMI cards are the same, it’s more the way the OS treats them.

I’m not I wasn’t properly aware of a new generation of the expansion cards on the main board Gen 11 to Gen 13 I am now :slight_smile: See post below as to why this was edited

There’s already info on battery life which you can find via search.

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According to the knowledge base v2/v3 cards are v1 cards with the hardware mods and firmware update that were posted.

There appears to be no official information on how great the power saving is but this post here HDMI Expansion Card mod to save power - #19 by Kris seems to indicated it is quite significant at around 1.0 watt.

The savings probably translate to standby as well.

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I recently received the 3rd gen HDMI card and did some small power tests using powertop.

Circumstances: Wifi & Bluetooth deactivated, closed all running software, lowest brightness, aggressive TLP settings, no expansion cards (except for the tested HDMI card), Fedora 39 Gnome, Bios 3.08 beta. I’ve plugged in a card, letting it settle for 2 minutes, and noted down 8 power draw values.

Both cards (1st and 3rd gen) got the USB ID 32ac:0002.

Laptop Idle:
2.18 to 2.28W, Avg: 2.22W

1st gen HDMI Card (autosuspend deactivated, default on linux):
2.66 to 2.73W, Avg: 2.67W

3rd gen HDMI Card (autosuspend deactivated, default on linux):
2.51 to 2.68W, Avg: 2.57W

1st gen HDMI Card (autosuspend activated):
2.35 to 2.42W, Avg: 2.38W

3rd gen HDMI Card (autosuspend activated):
2.17 to 2.32W, Avg: 2.23W

So in both cases (autosuspend activated/deactivated) the new 3rd gen card seems to draw 100 to 150 mW less.
Activating autosuspend reduces the power draw by ~300 to 350 mW for both cards. 3rd gen comes very cloth to idle power draw with autosuspend activated.
Be aware that autosuspend on the card might result in an unstable system.

The results for the 1st gen card seem to be in line with: Framework 12th gen laptop review - anarcat

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Just FYI:
An the most recent Fedora version and on my FW13 12th gen on Bios 3.08 beta, adding USB_ALLOWLIST="32ac:0002" in /etc/tlp.conf works fine and without any issues.
Overnight battery drain is normal and connected HDMI devices seem to be stable.

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