New R3 owner coming from longtime R1 use!

So my brand spankin new R3 is in my car waiting for me to get off work.

The best advice thus far that I've noticed is definitely download nvidia's drivers, not dells....

But I wanted to ask, does anyone NOT have problems with optimus? Why on earth can't they give us the option to use optimus or manually control. I just can't stand the idea that I'm going to have to mess with my system constantly to make sure that I'm the gpu that I want to be on...

Does anyone actually LIKE optimus vs manual control? I can understand if you're not really computer savvy, optimus might be nice...... but I'm pretty sure those who would buy an m11x would probably understand when to switch the gpu

Here's to hoping my optimus experience isn't as annoying as these forums lead me to believe!!

 

To be honest, I don't ever recall having one problem with optimus, I have never whitelisted any game ever and they have always used the Nvidia GPU when necessary. So maybe I might be alone on this, but for me it works well, although the additional option of a manual switch would still be a great idea.
Do note I have an R2, but I am assuming its the exact same across the R2 and R3.

 

Thanks for the input man.. that's what I wanted to hear. Typing on my new toy now!

My keyboard feels great, the thing closes so much better than my R1, and I absolutely love the Nebula Red. Makes the thing look a lot sleeker than my beloved black one

 

Yeah I'll second that - I've never had a "problem" with it. It can be burdonsome at times to remember to check the whitelist if an app seems to be running unusually slowly, but the benefits of Optimus far outweigh that occasional inconvenience (notably, massive battery life when not doing high performance stuff).

If it does bug you, then you could just fire up the Nvidia control panel and lock the Nvidia chipset on permanently. To me though that defeats the purpose of Optimus in a machine this size. In the M17 sure - go ahead. But not the M11x.

 

Got an R3 after owning a R1 too and I must say I prefer manual control.
On the other hand, the good side is that you can update the nvidia video drivers to the latest without loosing the switching technology.
so on the overall it's a +1 for optimus because drivers can be updated.

 

After using modified opti drivers on the R1 I can see the attraction. The one thing that I might miss is if you cant run 3 screens on the Rx.

Anyway with what I'm doing even the R1 optimus drivers seem to know which card to use so suspect you wont have much trouble. If you do there is likely a fix already posted.

 

You can run 3 screens on the R2 and I am assuming the R3 as well. Using the hdmi out and display port, as well as the native screen.

 

For some indie games @ steam you'll need to whitelist them, examples like Orcs Must Die!, Trine 2, Dungeon Defenders, Bastion etc.

 

I have no problems with it, only a few games i had to whitelist like skyrim when it came out.

 

After using it for a bit, I have to say its really not too bad to have to whitelist the programs. I did have to do it with some of those steam games...

In fact the first game I played was bastion. I didn't know id have to whitelist..

The game actually ran pretty damn well on the integrated. I didn't even realize at first that it wasn't on the nvidia.... when I figured it out, I was very pleased at how incredibly smooth it was

Heck even skyrim is running at max details (cept AA) with all the ini tweaks that I have on my main box. Amazing machine!!!

 

Bastion did run very smoothly on intergrated, but when you turn on nvidia card for it i realized it actually ran really bad, it was just syncing whatever managing it somehow...

i am running skyrim at max without any tweaks with anti-aliasing and anti-strophic @ 4, running smooth without OC and butter smooth with some OC...

Really, its much less a nuisance with the latest drivers, than it was say a year ago when you had to whitelist pretty much everything yourself and half of them didn't actually work - didn't turn on the nvidia card...

However now it works fine... with some exceptions and some latest games still needing to whitelist (had to whitelist skyrim manually... not a biggie just you know... really?)

When it works, it works great though a year before when i was using another optimus laptop, i was cursing it almost every day wishing i had BLOODY MANUAL SWITCHING OPTION!

 

My experience mirrors most members here. Its has worked for me every time except I had to whitelist my SWTOR beta. But other than that it runs great. The GPU does tend to get hotter than I like, so I will be doing some of the cooling mods found on these forums.

 

You can manually control it in a way. Just go to the nVidia control panel and "manage 3D settings" and in the "global settings" tab chose preferred graphics processor as either the nvidia card or sandy bridge gpu. It will use that gpu for most everything. Its easy to do.

 

Good news. Thanks for info

 

white-listing things is actually not too hard to do. Very new games or older titles you will probably have to whitelist. But really it is quite simple. Just find out which folder your game is sitting in, add every .exe (or application file) to the list that are in that folder, and you should be fine. =)

I put everything in the list just to be safe, but I have found that many things do default correctly to the proper processor. Also some simple games (like chess or minesweeper and such) you may want to run on the integrated graphics. For example, when I am in-between classes and have nothing to do, I like to play something simple without sucking my battery down.

I probably would have liked manual control better. But I never had an R1 so I can't say for sure. But the optimus does work alright if sometimes needing a bit of fiddling.

I have also had things running on the nvidia chip often when they did not need to and I did not want them to. Simple little programs like my logitech mouse added two apps to my nvidia gpu. Those were Toaster.exe and Lcore.exe. I had to track them down in the computer and add them to the list and purposefully tell them to use integrated. I don't know why they were defaulting to the nvidia chip, they just were.

You should notice an icon that says 'nvidia GPU activity' in your icon list. I set that to always remain visible on my taskbar. It will change color when some program is using the nvidia gpu, then you can hover your mouse over it and it will tell you which files are using the nvidia chip.

I found this very handy for spotting sneaky programs using the chip when they were not supposed to, and for checking that the ones which Should be using the chip, really were using it. I have noticed that if the nvidia chip was running at all, even when I didn't want or need it to on a simple little program, it would really shorten my battery life. So it is important to keep an eye on it to prevent that from happening.

 

So after using the R3 for quite some time over the weekend... I'm glad my concerns are much less of an issue than I expected. I really haven't had any problems other than having to add a few things to the whitelist.

What about the "turbo" mode? What program would one advise that I download to make sure that my processor is OCing itself when it needs it... is there any way to control it? I would assume its overclocking itself when the CPU load reaches a certain point...

Thanks for all the infos, everyone. Absolutely love my machine.

 

I have not found a good program for monitoring the actual speed of the cpu. It does use automatic overclocking and will basically speed itself up when it needs to.

The program I use to monitor things is HWmonitor and can be found here. CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting CPUID (the company that makes HWmonitor) also makes a number of other programs to help monitor things. The only problem is that their software for monitoring the CPU speed does not currently support the M11x. I keep hoping they will include it because I am curious about that also.

Mainly I use HWmonitor to keep an eye on my temps while gaming and such. For the most part you shouldn't need to worry though about your cpu auto-overclock. I have found that it does a good job of taking care of that on its own when needed. Although I have noticed that when on battery power the overclock seems to fluctuate and gaming can be a bit strange. Sometimes nice and smooth, then slows down for a bit, then speeds back up. But when on wall plug power I have no issues at all. And mostly I only do heavier gaming when on plug power.

There really is not a good way to manually overclock the new r3 i5's and i7's. You can squeeze a few extra mhz out through fiddling with your bios settings, but it just isn't worth it. Especially as it would void your warranty with dell if your cpu cooks itself. And the speed increase is negligible.

You can go into your windows power settings and adjust options for when you are plugged in or on battery power. I believe it also lets you set how far your CPU will push itself on different power setups. To do that, go into your control panel, pick Performance Information and Tools, then pick Adjust Power Settings on the menu on the left side of the screen. from there it is just a matter of picking your power plan and setting up advanced profiles and such.

I hope that helps with some of your questions. If someone knows of a good program to show the MHz value that the cpu is running at in real time that would be pretty cool to post a link for in here. I have been looking for a good program to do that for a while myself.

 

but isn't changing the following settings in nvidia control panel the same thing as a manual switch? the default setting is "auto select"... setting it to nvidia processor should leave it on for all applications.

manage 3d settings > global settings > preferred graphics processor > high-performance nvidia processor

 

The difference is mainly one of having to fiddle around in submenus vs just pressing a couple buttons on your keyboard. But I have found that some programs will still default to the integrated graphics processor even with the global set up for the nvidia processor. It is rare, but it can happen. When this occurs you need to manually whitelist everything you want to be absolutely certain to run on the Nvidia processor. So I usually get this out of the way first thing when setting up a new game or other application.

Also when on battery power you really don't want to be defaulting to the nvidia chip regularly because of the increased power drain. I like having 5 hours or so of battery time when I am away from easy access to a power outlet. And as I mentioned previously, even if the nvidia chip is only running small things it can seriously reduce your battery time.

Also I have had cases where if I pull the power plug and go on battery for a while, then plug it back in to the outlet, it will sometimes not switch power profiles properly for best performance. When this happens I have to restart the system to get it to use the proper power profile. This is not a big deal, but it can be mildly annoying sometimes.

 

About Turbo boost, Intel has the Turbo boost technology monitor, after installation i sits on top of your desktop and shows the turbo mode the processor is in live... Notebook — Intel® Turbo Boost Technology Monitor)

 

ahh nice ! thanks negyuh =)

 

Thanks Negyuh!! Appreciate it!

And you're right Zenstrata, it is basically having to navigate menus vs FN F6. granted, it's REALLY not a big deal, and I actually have no reason to want to set this thing to Nvidia graphics unless Im gaming or doing something else that can't run well on the integrated.

I will say, another nice benefit, is that on my R1, if I were in integrated mode, my SCREEN actually didn't look as sharp and bright. And I spent 95% of my time in integrated mode. I'd switch to the Nvidia graphics card and the brightness and clarity would be noticably better.

With the R3, the screen quality is always the same, whether or not it's running on intel or nvidia.

Love this thing... it runs certain games better than my desktop (primarily GTA 4. My desktop card only has 896MB and this one has 1GB... and thanks to only having to run in 1366x768 rez)