Anyone have any idea why my laptop would perform (considerably) better while on battery than while plugged in? It's a Dell Latitude E6420 with Windows 8 Pro. I tried mirroring all the settings in the selected power plan from "On battery" to "Plugged In" and that didn't help. I then just restored the defaults for all power plans (balanced and high performance). I'm still seeing the same results.

The best example where it is most noticeable (don't laugh) is Sim City Social in Chrome. I'm probably seeing a performance increase of 5x on battery versus plugged in. This is easily reproducible too.

I'm very confused.

Could it be caused by dust?

The laptop isn't that old and there is no visible dust. I'm not going to take it apart to check the insides as it's a corporate laptop.

Could it be overheating?

Battery

• Sim City Social: 68 degrees max
• Civ V: 77 degrees max

Charger

• Sim City Social: 68
• Civ V: did not test

See answer below... I'm retarded