do i need nvidia optimus?

guys! i need your advice.

i must to choose ips screen or nvidia optimus;/

the question is: how much economy optimus do vs main gpu .
(the laptop most of time in idle mode)

any ideas welcome.

 

Fepends on natute od your work. If you need battery life go with optimus. If you do profesional photography go with ips screen. Apart from profesionals most people who use notebooks dont notice the difference...

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just plug my old dell u2209 and i really like ips colors more:/
hope m6600 ips has same quality=)

but still would like to found some research

 

Yeah it all comes down to what battery life you require.

 

Yep, tough comparison but for my vote and usage, I love Optimus... I get 5+ hours of battery life with my GT60 and 6+ with my G46, both thanks to Optimus.

Depends really if you want to use the laptop on the go without plugging in for more than a couple hours. I drag mine along with me to jobsites all day so really enjoy the mobility and battery life, but if it sits on a desk all day plugged in then the screen would be a nice upgrade.

 

..then again, since Kepler, the benefit of having optimus is pretty much gone, thanks to the fairly high power-draw the intel hd graphics chips have compared to a smaller kepler card on low clocks. ..you could end up having a lower average power-draw both when running 3d and 2d if you run only office-applications, movies, etc. With things that either don't have 3d acceleration, or apps that use hardware acceleration sparingly. Better image-quality as well, come to that..

 

The intel graphics can go down to much lower power draw at idle since it has no dedicated GDDR5 memory interface to keep active and a lower transistor count at a smaller process node.

 

Hmm, both my 660m and 780m in their respective laptops get noticeably less battery life when I leave the dGPU enabled over the iGPU when doing basic web browsing, Word, etc. In my G46 (IvyBridge) it's the difference of a couple hours when I compared when I first got the laptop as it was my first Optimus machine and I was skeptical. Haven't taken the time for a full test with the 780m (Haswell) versus the 4600HD but the little Windows timer is 3ish hours remaining versus 5ish hours on a full charge. Not positive how that would compare over the full discharge however.

Maybe this is because both are powered when the dGPU is in my machines? Not sure, haven't compared similar laptops that don't offer Optimus with those that do, but battery life is very nice. But then so are IPS screens

 

The numbers I had basically said that a 650m while idling will draw some 2w whether it's used or not. While running a 2d context on it, with and without flash and hardware acceleration, it would stay as low as 5-10w if the clock didn't turn up (but that can go higher on higher loads, of course). And doing the same on the intel graphics ended up with higher increases on the battery draw.

Which really surprised me, because I had been reading so much about how optimus reduced power-drain. And you of course think that there's a really good reason why intel would make their own igps in the first place, and that manufacturers have this on all laptops, etc. But apparently not.

So that if you buy a laptop with a k2000m, or a 750m or something like that, I'd be willing to bet good money that it's possible, in many situations at least, to get better battery life on it without an optimus system (even if the cpu still has an igp that still drains battery whenever the array is turned on)..

Then again, one snag is that if you use the desktop effects in windows, you could suddenly end up with the nvidia card clocking up really fast, and generally getting pretty big loads even when you're not doing anything (preview popups being rendered in real-time, constantly, etc). And in that case, running the desktop on the igp and only specific other contexts on the nvidia card will save battery in practice, since the roof for "non-accelerated" effects (as long as the 3d context function calls aren't used) on the igp is lower..

 

that doesnt make much sense.

simply put you have the dgpu that will be on no matter what, albeit at very reduced clocks and the igpu that will always be on no matter what. So in the end if you dont use optimus the igpu will still use power since the signal will pass through it.

however the problem with dgpus is that their min clock and voltage are lower when optimus is engaged then when its off.

so in the end it will consume more battery life.

the problem is OEMs that dont know how to design mobos that sip power instead of gulping it, and screen tech that isnt up to par to what we have now, we solved the BT problem and the wifi is more or less resolved, the main problem is still those 2, screen and mobo. At least screen we have igzo so some hope and there are those screens with buffers on them as well, that would lower the dgpu, igpu, cpu, power consumption along with the screen as well (probable on the last one)

 

how that possible? why signal will pass throught it: i mean ips is 10bit signal with is no-no on intel gpu.

so no matter what intel gpu is always powered?(

 

I guess you could speculate that someone figured out they needed either a separate path for the output to get any benefit from ips, or they would have optimus instead. But because intel is so open with their standards, and so on, who can say..

(But I mean, it is technically possible to create a firmware that disables the "igp" (it's not really an igp now, it's embedded on the die), has a more normal output path on the motherboard, and so on. But I'd guess most setups just disable the optimus switch in the bios, and still use that pipeline via the intel bus.)

 

I was talking about a system that has a mux, thus you can choose between optimus or not

you can bypass the igpu, dont ask me how they do it, because I really dont know

 

well optimus less noisy as i see now=) probably i will go with external lcd.

1 more question: if i go from intel i5 to i7 extrem.. how much noisy it will be in office/movies mode?

 

I find IPS screens to be unnecessary for laptops. You might get "better colours," but the increased power draw isn't worth it. Moreover, you aren't going to be looking at your laptop at an awkward angle because you can always just pivot your screen forwards or backwards. In fact, I don't like people peering over and spying on my while I'm using my laptop so IPS would be a downgrade.

 

You know, I'm not sure a good ips design actually does draw more power than a current lcd. I mean, if anything it should be lower, since the matrix isn't doubled and treat x and y separately like it is on lcd. ..right? Shouldn't that make sense - more stable image at the same refresh rate, but with fewer transistors and less power?

 

IMO no.

Switchable graphics eliminates features from both AMD and Nvidia since the terrible terrible terrrible terrible terrible Intel graphics is always on.

I think should just decide. If you want battery, just get one with iGPU. If you want gaming power, get one without switchable graphics.

Also both AMD and Nvidia idle at very lower speeds and both shut down unneeded cores for power savings. It will still give sufficient battery life.