I'm looking at getting a newer tablet. It's kind of a toss-up between the Asus Zenpad S and the Nvidia Shield K1. I'm trusting I'll be able to plug my controller in and emulate PSP things on either, but word is that the battery drains a little quick on the Shield since it's carrying a lot of beef, relatively speaking. Is the battery drain going to happen faster as a result of having more processing power available, or is it going to drain at the same rate for either device if you're only using a moderate amount of performance.
I ask, of course, because I've got an xbox controller that I dongle into my present tablet, and, well, you only get the one port. If I'm going to kill the battery faster running Super Mario 64 on the one over the other, I'm probably going to reach for the thing with longevity.
With as tech savvy as I am, I should probably know these things.
Generally speaking, faster CPUs are less efficient, and use more power to do the same work. This is because while CPU power use increases linearly with frequency, increased frequency requires increased voltage and power usage increases with Voltage
squared. So even a relatively minor change, e.g. 1.1x frequency, 1.1x Voltage would be a 1.1 * 1.1^2 = 1.331 times more power use.
Another consideration is that if the chip is
larger (more cores or more graphics units) it will use more static power, that is power which is used regardless of the work it is doing.
There are many other factors to consider, but generally a slower chip will give you better battery life - if the battery is the same size!!!
... which it's not. The Zenpad's is ~75% the size of the Shield's.