M14x GPU and Physx Questions!

First off, I would like to thank all of you for your wonderful posts as I've browsed this forum for quite some time, even prior to my purchase of this laptop, and you guys have helped me in making my decision to purchase this excellent laptop. Thank you!

Now, to my questions. I used to be heavily into PC gaming, that was years and years ago, now I don't know the first thing about how the new GPUs work and how the Physx (software? hardware?) works.

1. Can I Disable Intel HD Graphics When Not Plugged In? (Intergrated Graphics)
I noticed when my laptop is not plugged in my Laptop reverts to the PC's integrated graphics, something I am not fond of. It runs terribly sloppy and as far as I'm concerned defeats the purpose of gaming outside of my home. I understand battery issues, but If I'm on for a half hour, I'm expecting some quality. What I'm asking is how do I make my PC run ONLY my GPU.

2. Can I Maximize The 3GB Nvidia Card My Laptop Came With?
I purchased the 3GB 555M, and I've watched majority of videos on Youtube of people testing their M14x's and they get the same results as I get with their 1.5GB 555M. Surely a 1.5GB increase means something significant, no? I'm curious if I can maximize my 3GBs to run games even better than my laptop already does.

3. Physx Not Working?
In the game Batman Arkham City I noticed the first time I played the game that cloth would fly around, paper would crinkle and fabrics moved in a realistic manner. This was due in part to Physx, but the game ran slow. So I went to the Nvidia panel and changed the "auto-select" setting in Physx to my GPU just to make sure it wasn't using the intergrated component to process the physx (truthfully I have zero idea how the Physx component in my PC works) and then these effects disappeared. I was confused. So I put it back to the auto-select feature but these effects aren't appearing anymore regardless of what setting I use. What did I do here?

Thanks in advance everyone! Your input is greatly appreciated.

 

Hi Bud,

I will take a stab at answering your questions...

1.. yes, under the nvidia settings you can configure it so only the Nvidia gpu will be used, as opposed to it being set on automatic.

2.. mm tough one, tbh 3gb on a gt555 generally makes no noticable difference at all , its more of a marketing exercise to get you to part with extra cash.

3.. No idea, the games i play dont use Phsyx, but generally you can either run it on the processer(which is slower) or on the nvidia processor(which should be faster). No reason why after you changing the settings that the effects stop working unless its a bug in the game or other unusual quirk. do some googling about batman and physx bud.

 

+rep for a good answer

only thing I would like to add it make sure the game is whitelisted properly. If you don't know how to do that, Check the link in my sig.

 

1- You cannot disable it entirely, but you can temporary during game/3D programs, the reason is because the iGPU is being use as the primary display card while the GT555M is dedicated GPU, the only way to force the game to run on the GT555M is in the NVIDIA Control Panel (Right click on Desktop, guide is in my sig) but the disadvantage for using the GT555M on battery is that it will drain your battery fast and the GPU itself will also downclock to help save the battery unless you use the A01 BIOS version where the downclock does not happen but your battery will run out of juice in less than 30mins.

2- Well the 3GB version in term of speed and performance is not different to the 1.5GB counterpart at all, the only good use of it is if you going to use an external screen and play game on it that it will need a large amount of memory to hold or you do video processing, and I actually never came across to any game that require more than 1GB of VRAM.

3- PhysX does working, but it will use the Auto setting, thus it will choose the CPU and will increase the heat and slow the game down because of the CPU have to both process the game and the PhysX graphic at the same time, so I recommend switch it to use the GT555M which can be found in the NVIDIA Control Panel, however this will also increase the heat generate from the GPU too but the up side is that, games that use PhysX will generally run faster because of the GPU's clock speed is faster than the CPU's.

Another thing for the PhysX is that, not many game use it, and the game that use it, is usually will be turn off on the M14x, because the PhysX usually only available if you play on High (sometime Medium) or Ultra setting, and with being the GT555M is not a high-end GPU, most modern and graphic demanding games like Batman and Metro 2033, the PhysX will be useless.