Your opinion on Nvidia's Optimus

I recently read a review on the Asus U30Jc-A1 which has Nvidia's Optimus graphics installed.

The link to the review is here: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-u30jc-a1/4505-3121_7-34043767.html (i'm not sure how biased cnet's reviews are)

So I was wondering what your opinions are on this new technology...

If I am a college freshman who is very interested in gaming is this the best route to go considering the nice balance between battery life and gaming performance?

Or would I be better off choosing a performance-high end video card which could for sure handle serious gaming and just try to deal with the low battery life?

 

In a word: WANT.
I'm not a heavy gamer; I can run the stuff I want to at native resolution on a mid-range card (heck, I'm doing that on a mid-range card from three generations ago!), and the extra battery life netted from being able to shut the whole shebang down is incredibly valuable as a student.

If this was available two years ago when I got my current system, hell yes I'd get it.

 

Well, there are certainly no downsides to Optimus as far as I can tell.

 

except for the price
seems kinda steep for <900usd

 

The important thing with what you're looking at isn't the Optimus technology itself, but rather the presence of an IGP and a dedicated card (switchable graphics). The UL30vt, the ancestor of the UL30jc, had almost the same setup (Intel 4500/nVidia 210m), but just had a harder time switching between the two.

What Optimus does, if I remember correctly, is do the graphics-card-switching automatically with little hassle.

So, as Suigi said, it is a very wantable ultralight. It's is a great improvement over the UL30vt, since it has a heavier-hitting Core i3 and the 310m should be slightly stronger than the 210m.

Incidentally, I can't find much info on the Core i3 M350 CPU.

 

I can say I have a laptop with a Hybrid Power graphics configuration (4500MHD/9600M GT), and I would certainly prefer Optimus over what I have.

Switching is annoying, and finding/making appropriate drivers is a battle.

Laptops with Optimus do not have these down points.


~~Of course, plain old switchable graphics with a more powerful dedicated graphics card will have the same advantages in regards to power consumption, though do check battery life by laptop model (not just anything with optimus/hybrid power/ati switchable graphics), as it hopefully shouldn't be too hard to get something with 5-7 hours.

 

Im really looking foward for this tecnology to be implemented on high end gaming laptops, this should give a lot of freedom when chosing a gaming laptop to work also, at least for me .

 

Yeah I think it will be right at home on larger high end gaming laptops. Unlike the complaints they had about weight/size on the 13" market and how its "kinda powerful but kinda not" in a full fledged 15/17" model simply adding a low power integrated on top of all the other stuff will not increase the weight/size any noticeable amount but will offer great battery extension and maybe even longer life to your main GPU.

 

I prefer plain old hybrid graphics on asus ul30vt. You can control when you want to switch and when you don't which translate a little bit higher performance and longer battery life.

 

I would actually prefer a system where the switching is manual, with the option of enabling a feature that would automatically switch to integrated when the power is unplugged. However, the downside is, as namaiki pointed out, finding appropriate drivers is very annoying, and if Optimus can help make the system more widely adopted, I'm all for it. It's better than single-GPU solutions, at any rate.

 

can anyone tell me what all cards / notebooks currently allow for manual switching over or turning off their dedicated GPU?

Thanks!

 

i'd like optimus.. would help a lot in increasing battery life but i'm not buying NVDIA again.. hopefully ATI come out with something like this.

 

Personally I would just like it if my HD5870 can shut down cores so no need for switchable graphics.

I imagine it's the 800 Stream Processors that eats up majority of the power. I don't think I need 800 Stream Processors when I'm using the laptop on battery. Wonder how much less power be used if 700 of them were disabled while on battery.

 

The way I see it, this could be beneficial to more than just ultralights.
My 16" Acer gets 3-3.5 hours on a 2-year-old 8-cell battery even with the GPU enabled. Imagine if I could turn it off completely and run on a GMA 4500MHD (again, if my system was equipped).

 

Thanks for the opinions guys.

 

I enjoy the ability to choose which card I want to use. Rise of Nations does not require a dedicated card but FSX does. If I want to get the most out of my battery I will play RON on a long trip. I only run FSX while plugged to the outlet. Opimus would cut down on my battery life when gaming mobile due to the graphic nature of RoN.

 

You can set which gfx card to use with profiles in nvidia control panel.

 

Do laptops specify when the ability to switch graphics cards is present?

Or does it come standard with all Nvidia graphics installed laptops?

 

They would have it specified.

 

I'm curious to see more reviews, NBR's review of Optimus in the Asus had disappointing (and yet to be explained) results.

 

I am not sure if this is the same Asus NBR reviews, but this laptop review includes optimus: ASUS N61J-X2: Optimus GT325M Meets Arrandale - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

What happened to your Nvidia graphics card?

 

Both the old and present models of the Sony Z series allow manual switching from IGP to Dedicated

both VGN-Z series and VCP-Z series

 

Switchable graphics will have to be advertised in order for a laptop to have that function. Just because a laptop has a discrete and integrated GPU does NOT mean it will be switchable.

 

it runs hotter than a oven and literally even at 70C , my whole laptop become hot...i give up on NVDIA... looks like ATI is my best choice... anyways , it only runs at 70C because of all my tweaks... without them , CPU and GPU were 80-100C...and trust me , u'd know how and oven feels then...