Is nVIDIA Optimus worth it?

I've heard some good and bad things about nVIDIA's Optimus technology. As a high school senior going in to college soon, the power + battery life are extremely appealing.

I would sacrifice a GTX560M for a GT555M with Optimus, but anyone who's had experience with Optimus, could you post your thoughts about Optimus, how much it increases battery life, how useful it is, and overall, was it worth the weaker graphics card to have the ability to switch between a GPU and a IGP?

Also wrong section, but quick question: are glowing keyboard stickers a good replacement for a backlit keyboard? Sager is appealing to me but I still want some semblance of style and coolness in my thousand dollar investment. Thanks guys!

 

You can still get a 560m with optimus, I had an Alienware m17x with 560m and optimus.

As you have already guessed it has it pros and cons.

Battery life is so much better with optimus on the m17x. It would idle at 29w with the 560m active or 21w with the intel active so about a 40% saving on power.

Drivers are getting better with optimus and with most laptops you can get them direct from nvidia without having to mod the inf.

Most games are working well with optimus now but I did struggle with a few games. Also performance is often better with optimus disabled.
The games I had issues with were:
DOW2 (performance not as expected)
RUSE (would crash on startup, took loads of fiddling to fix it)

Games that ran perfectly for me:
COD BO and MW2
BFBC2
Shogun2
SC2
SupComm2
BF3 beta (got rid of the 560m before actual release)

 

Automatic graphic switching, be it from NVIDIA or AMD, is a fine idea in theory, but in execution it often comes up well short. Some titles don't run correctly or even at all, even when you try every trick in the book. Manual switching is the best way to go. Unfortunately, only laptops with an Intel CPU/IGP and a dedicated AMD GPU have it correct (or at least as close to correct as I would like) in the consumer space. There are some professional notebooks such as the Lenovo W520 and Dell Latitude that have the ability to disable Optimus via the BIOS, which is a nice option; those machines are more for CAD/modeling than gaming, though. Current-generation consumer machines as the HP Envy 14 and 17, HP Pavilion dv6/dv7, Dell Vostro 3350/3450/3550/3750, and Sony Vaio S all have some form of manual graphic switching either via a BIOS trick, hardware switch, or software implementation. I know I've left out a few notebooks with NVIDIA GPUs that have manual switching, but the vast majority use older CPUs and weak GPUs and are not really suited for modern gaming. The only one that's semi-decent is the Alienware M11x R1.

I've tried them and they don't work. A waste of money IMO.

 

I've had Optimus in my laptop since May and I really like it. I've never actually been able to get 4-6 hours of battery life in any laptop, let alone an Alienware. But when I'm taking it to class it does last most of the day (I have 9-5 classes almost daily) and when I game it does perform very well (BF3 on ultra 2x AA 1600x900). I've never run into any problems with the graphics switching not working I think because I play newer games (like 2007 and later) so it's never been an issue. Overall it's an awesome balance between battery and power IMO.

However, if it was for gaming, I'd probably go for upgradeability over Optimus.

 

Optimus is great, but sometimes you find yourself having to exit games and re open with the right graphics card. It has some glitches, but overall it's a great thing. Also, I don't see why you can't get optimus on a 560m. I have it and it works fine. Maybe they just didn't put it in the specs sheet?

 

Because you have one of the two brands of notebooks where it was available (the other being Alienware). Optimus is available on these high-end GPUs, but it's up to the OEM to enable it. It's not something that can be done by the end user.

 

Thanks so much for your opinions! I guess it's better to get the GT555 (sniff sniff) for college life.

 

Looks like it

 

I have a year-old Asus n61jv with Optimus (GT325m), and I really can't say that I'm satisfied. The overall battery life of that laptop is horrid ( around 2.5 hrs on max saving mode, less then a single hour on full performance mode) - but that's not the Optimus's fault- and on many occasions, I had major problems getting the nVidia GPU to run. Plus there's no way to disable it (at least none that I know - feel free to correct me), and recently I'm facing a huge issue described here and here (nVidia forum)