ASUS Sandy Bridge laptops and exclusive use of intergrated GPU

Please correct any of the following if their wrong:

- from what under-stand Optimus allows switching between the integrated GPU and the discrete GPU as required to conserve laptop power
- this feature is disabled in all ASUS G laptops i.e the G73JW, G53Jw, G73SW, G53SW
- Sandy Bridge CPUs include a significantly improved GPU intergrated into the CPU die/chunk/thing

So although their is no Optimus technology to switch between the Intel GPU and NVIDIA GPU to conserve power 'on-the-fly'/whilst the OS is running:

Q1) Is it possible to switch exclusively to the Intel GPU out of choice or in the event of a discrete NVIDIA GPU card failure?

This is important for my current decision as I've had to cancel my current ASUS G53SW order due to the Intel Sandy Bridge motherboard recall/delay. As such I'm debating:

Q2) Getting the G53JW or waiting for the G53SW due to:
a) approx. 40% increase in CPU power
b) possible use of upgraded Intel GPU in the event of NVIDIA GPU failure

Some of you may not think the (b) is not so important but right now I'm typing on a faulty (chassis-wise) Alienware m15x-R1 with a dead (and removed) 8800m GTX. As a result of this "lemon in a lemon" situation I am now running of the Intel motherboard GPU and can no longer game (excluding Minecraft etc.)

 

My 9800M GTS just died so I know what you mean.

I *really* don't understand why the G73SW doesn't include use of the integrated graphics, especially since the processor, chipset, and video card all have the hardware to support it.

To answer your question: no, the graphics card cannot (to my knowledge) be switched to specifically in any capacity. I have tried installing drivers and probing for it in linux, but to no avail. I believe the implementation needs to be done at the BIOS level, but I'm hopeful ASUS will see the utility and prudence in enabling the video switching or exclusive use of integrated graphics in the future and provide an update to add it.



Though, with all that said I got 4 hours battery life today. Not too shabby at all.

 

Erm... it's a gaming notebook and even if the CPU increase in power exists, it will barely affect your gaming experience. See the 3D mark 11 scores on G73SW versus G73JW. They are practically the same or within in a 5% margin

Don't jump on me, I'm not saying the SB Cpu's are not better. They are, but in G53JW the limiting factor is not the CPU...
Check my sig, I'm perfectly happy with an i5

edit: but still pissed for the missing optimus tech...

 

@NaterGator: I rarely run off battery, even when making a presentation, but battery life and noise reduction are the only things I can think of in terms of benefits from using integrated GPU exclusively.

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@manu72: No jumping here and fair point. I guess my main concern was playing my favourite game ArmA2:OA which is very much CPU intensive. But even quad-core is still an after thought in ArmA2:OA and not even a thought at all in most games.

I'm comparing an i7 740QM in the ASUS G53JW to a 2630QM in the ASUS G53Sw in this particular case.

Where is this JW vs SW comparison you mention?

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Optimus is not a main concern for me. As I said to @NaterGator I rarely run off battery and as such is not a concern. The G53JW/SW is more of a liftable work-horse for work and play rather than a DTR as such. I work in lab so having a good CPU for lots of processor hungry applications is helpful, but again it's rare that any of them would utilise a quad-core.

At the moment I opted for the refund for the ASUS G53SW.

Here's hoping they release it with the new Sandy Bridge dual-cores with higher clock speeds that hopefully make it cheaper. Including the new NVIDIA 500m series instead of the 460m would be nice too!

Anybody got any ideas on ASUS or even other brand of gaming laptops with this sort of offering in 2 months i.e. around the same date that ASUS has stated it would start re-releasing the SW variants?