How does optimus technology work

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If a hardware mux does not exist, there there is no physical way to perform this GPU switching. Thus Optimus is used to effectively "implement" a software mux. Specifically it ensures that relevant data is sent to and processed on the right GPU then the data needed for display is copied to the device that displays the image.

When it comes to how a specific machine is configured, there are a number of possibilities. Again, if the hardware mux exists it would be used to select which GPU drives the internal panel, or the external monitor, or possibly both. It is also possible, that a GPU is hardwired to the internal panel, so the other GPU cannot possibly drive the internal panel. The same goes for external monitor output. The best case scenario is a mux, which can select which GPU drivers control which outputs.

Basically, you can have any combination of these possibilities. There is no standard on how to wire things. There should be ways to detect the wirings and whether there is a mux and where, but the documentation is not available to the developers maybe you can help us figure out how to do this, have any ideas? You can also 'petition' nvidia for releasing these specs: nvidia customer help?

If your laptop has a hardware mux, the kernel switcheroo driver may be able to set the wanted GPU at boot. There are also hacks based on the switcheroo, like asus-switcheroo, but they offer no extra value.

If one of the hacks happens to work, and the switcheroo does not, the switcheroo has a bug. There might already be pending patches waiting to go towards the mainline kernel. In all other cases, you are stuck with what happens to work by default. No switching, no framebuffer copying. The laptop switches between each on-the-fly. Image Credit: Masaru Kamikura on Flickr. For most PC use, the onboard Intel graphics hardware is just fine. You will not notice a difference between onboard and discrete graphics when using desktop applications.

When you launch an application that needs high-powered 3D graphics, such as a PC game, the laptop powers on the NVIDIA graphics hardware and uses it to run the application. This increases 3D performance dramatically, but takes more power — which is fine if your laptop is plugged into an outlet. Most of the time, the switching should happen without you noticing or needing to tweak anything.

Updating your graphics drivers may solve problems with Optimus. If you left Steam open all the time, your battery life would be reduced because the NVIDIA graphics would remain powered on constantly. You may find yourself loading up a demanding game or other 3D-graphics-using application and noticing poor performance — a sign that the game is using your integrated Intel graphics hardware.

You can also select the Integrated graphics option to force an application to use your integrated graphics hardware. To force an application to always use a specific graphics process, click the Change default graphics processor option. Browse All iPhone Articles Browse All Mac Articles Do I need one?

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