Nvidia Optimus Technology Explained

Question

All this to save battery life...I would think that anyone who buys a 'gaming laptop' usually runs plugged into AC when gaming ??? IMHO, very complicated and a problem looking for a place to happen... Nvidia’s Optimus technology is a great thing to have on your laptop, especially if it uses a more powerful discrete graphics chip like a gaming laptop normally would. The idea behind the Optimus tech is that it can automatically switch on and off the more powerful discrete GPU, depending on the current usage of the laptop, for example if you run a game the discrete video card becomes activated and you can enjoy high fps. But when you are working on the laptop with office applications or browsing the web you don’t need a powerful GPU and the integrated Intel GPU can do just fine, so the discrete GPU gets completely shut off saving battery. This way you get the best of both worlds – high performance in games and other demanding applications and longer battery life when you are on the go and need longer battery life. The implementation Nvidia uses has the integrated Intel graphics active all the time, no matter if it is the GPU rendering the image, or only visualizing what is rendered from the discrete Nvidia GPU. When you run a game, the more powerful Nvidia video card gets activated and starts rendering the frames and as soon as a frame is being rendered it is sent to the integrated GPU’s framebuffer for visualization. So the integrated Intel graphics actually shows the image on the laptop’s screen no matter if it rendered the visual data or not, and so all the extra video connectors, such as HDMI for example, are usually connected to the integrated Intel GPU and not to the discrete Nvidia one. Source : http://3dvision-blog.com/5532-nvidia-optimus-technology-and-3d-vision-dont-go-well-together/

DELL-Terry B · Answer

17rseguy

This is a great post, thanks. In spite of the advance in CPU and GPUs technology there has been little advance in battery technology. A lot of the gamers that I know have a dedicated desktop for gaming. They choose a notebook like the 17r SE to have the power to game but to have the mobility their desktops will never have. Graphics switching features like Nvidia's Optimus and AMD's Enduro is a good answer. I agree though if the 17r SE is your only system and the notebook was purchased specifically for gaming it can prove frustrating. It is one of the reasons why I like the 3D version of the 17r SE which shipped with a fully discreet GPU for a dedicated gaming system.

Thanks again for the post.

TB

17rseguy · Answer

Yeh, I was surprised to learn in another forum that the 3D version of the 17R SE does not use the Nvidia Optimus GPU switching driver or the Intel HD 4000 integrated GPU.

So in the case of the 3D version, battery life is secondary.

Yeh, I think I would have preferred the 3D version 17R SE.

I wonder if any 3D version 17R SE owners experienced the GT 650 disappearing from Device Manager problem ?

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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