Hrbrid? Do I really need it?

I use my laptop for work and it's always plugged in. I sometimes game with it at home when I dont want to sit at my desk on my gaming rig.

It's ALWAYS plugged in. Do I really need hybrid running? I always have the two 260's running aways. So best performance windows 7 non-hybrid driver?

Thanks
helm

 

I would still use a hybrid driver in the event you need to unplug and switch to the 9400 for an extended period of time. I have my system set where the 9400 is disabled in the BIOS (Hybrid Graphics & Integrated Graphics both set to disabled). Driver was installed with all 3 active, but disabled after. When I know I will be running on battery for any given time, its a simple reboot, enable Hybrid and Integrated and then save changes. Shut down and ready for battery mode.

 

i leave mine on for two reasons:
1) sometimes i just don't have the patience to reboot
2) this is a big one for me since i don't like rebooting - you can't controll the brightness of your backlight without the 9400 being active.

if you don't mind rebooting, then i'm all for disabling.

i did have another reason why i leave hybrid on. when i was trying to find out why i couldn't control dimming i had to reinstall drivers every time i changed my config. is there way around that... i know *search* i'll do that in a minute.

 

Hrmmm.. I disabled it and FN+F4 and FN+F5 work fine. 186.82 Drivers

 

I disable both my integrated and hybrid and just run in SLI mode 24/7. I find sometimes the switch between Hybrid and Discrete cards can sometimes cause weirdness and instability, but that may have been just me I prefer not to have to switch.

 

Well, if you leave it plugged in, it's likely better to disable Hybrid Graphics and integrated graphics in the BIOS and just boot with the dedicated card(s). You won't really need the 9400M in this case, and if you have it disabled, the northbrige (in which it is packaged) will run cooler. Also, you will free up the 256MB of system RAM the 9400 hogs for itself.

If you have a SLI system, you can run hybrid with almsot any newer Nvidia driver (with modded .inf, of course - I like the 191.07 ones), as long as you install the drivers with Hybrid Graphics enabled in the BIOS, and after the system needs to reboot, start up your system with just the integrated graphics disabled and enable SLI in the Nvidia Control Panel.
The main reason regular drivers aren't working (i.e. produce a black screen on startup) is because regular drivers don't enable SLI by default, which is required for a hybrid SLI setup to work. Once you have enabled SLI and reboot, you can re-enable Hybrid graphics and it will work well (at least more or less - you might still have to press FN+F7 twice to get if you get a black screen with mouse cursor at times after waking from hibernation. But other than that, it's working.
Hybrid drivers will enable SLI by default when they detect a Hybrid setup, that's why they are (usually) working fine right off the bat.
If you don't have a SLI setup, you'll be limited to hybrid drivers when you wish to run hybrid graphics...unless there is a registry or other tweak to enable SLI...although there should be a driver .inf modification possible to enable it by default as well...food for thought...