Integrated vs. Discrete Graphics and Dynamic Switching

Ok, so I know very little about the current mobile technologies, and I really haven't kept up-to-date with the crazy cool things that are going on these days.

I realize that the current and previous (?) generations of the 'cores', that is, the i3-i5-i7's have integrated graphics processors. Now I really haven't read up on this technology terribly well, but the gist of it is that you can save electricity and prolong battery life by only using integrated graphics. As well, manufacturers can make value systems without discrete graphics...I'm guessing.

I'm a little confused about the dynamic switching between integrated and discrete graphics. It seems like the technology is GPU side and AMD (ATI/Radeon) and Nvidia Optimus are the two technologies? Am I right? I'm also confused as to what laptops offer the switching technology and how I can tell.

Lenovo and HP both seemed to have a gaff where they claimed their 2nd gen i5's/i7's had the technology but then realized they didn't. It seems Lenovo just flat out said that their laptops don't offer it currently (with the 2nd gen processors) and that it was a design flaw. HP seems to be claiming that AMD will release drivers that will enable it.

I'm very interested in this technology, but I have no idea how to tell if a laptop has it or not...or if its implemented correctly.

Any help?

 

AFAIK Lenovo's newest models do not have Optimus support at this time.

I would stay away from switchable graphics. No Linux support. Doesn't always work well. Hundreds of not thousands of issues on this forum alone.

 

Who cares about linux?

Three times the battery life is reason enough for Optimus.

 

Driver headaches are not. And not all notebooks have an option to disable 1 GPU unfortunately.

 

My ASUS U30Jc doesn't have the option to disable any gpu's, but it has not given me a problem ever.

I have always used the latest drivers from Intel (IGP) and nVidia (GPU) and all I have ever noticed (with each update) is how much smoother the system works.

This, of course, with Win7x64U.

If the driver problems are with Linux, then the solution is Win7.

 

People who like linux can see what a horrible thing Optimus is. Everything said above is true of optimus... yes it gives extra battery life, but it's just not worth the headaches. Optimus works by the discrete card pumping frames through a PCIe bus through the integrated graphics output. When the discrete is no longer required, the card is put into a "sleep" mode and the integrated graphics picks up the slack of it's normal duties. It can swap which card does what, on the fly. Windows is the only OS that currently takes advantage of Optimus, and it's not just a driver thing... the technology had to be built into Windows, and only Windows 7 is able to utilize it. The hardware is a different story. It has to be supported in the BIOS as well as having the correct physical hardware to incorporate it. The software isn't always "intelligent" enough to switch to what card is needed sometimes, and the performance is sometimes lacking because of that. NVIDIA has absolutely no plans to support optimus on Linux now or any time in the future... so on Linux it's a toss-up as to which card you actually can use, and even then the driver support for it's crazy hardware implementation is seriously lacking. It's usually the integrated that is functional, leaving the discrete card un-usable.

AMD's switchable graphics solution uses MUX's to switch graphics cards, and it's completely different that NVIDIA's solution. It uses no PCIe lanes, and since there aren't any bandwidth problems AMD's solution also supports 3D. The way AMD's solution works means it's compatible with pretty much any OS, as there's really no "special" hardware. Only MUX's that are controlled at the BIOS level, and can be interacted with through software.

Simple.

If you want to game on your notebook, buy a notebook with nice graphics card. If you want battery life get a machine with integrated graphics. Aside from the oddity that is the Alienware M11x, there is NO gaming machine that gets halfway respectable battery life. Optimus just isn't worth it, IMO. My uMBP is the LAST switchable graphics notebook I'll ever buy, and it's not even Optimus.

People that use primarily linux aren't going to use Win7, even though that is the solution. Optimus could have been great, but the implementation is horrible. AMD's solution is much better. Plus with the strength of current IGP, there's no reason to switch on the fly anymore. IGP's now can handle just about any general task, like 1080p flash video, with no issue...

@the OP... I'd suggest waiting for an AMD solution. They seem to have gotten it right, IMO. You can forget getting Intel and NVIDIA to work on anything together.

 

What about the new Dell XPS 15 (L502)?

 

I wouldn't necessarily label that a gaming notebook, and IDK about battery life on that... It just seems to me that Optimus notebooks have identity issues. They don't know if they want to be gaming notebooks or have awesome battery life. I haven't seen one be really good at either.

But I haven't used a notebook with the new i-series and Optimus... so it may be better.

 

It seems to get at least 5 hours and it would bench better than the 'gaming notebook' M11x. (though it would be awesome to have 485m Optimus machine with that same stretch of battery life)

Well, I was considering getting one but as it doesn't perform too much better than what I currently have, I'm gonna hold off for now.

 

I'm in the camp of "Get one notebook to do one thing, get another to do the other."

Most "Gaming" notebooks aren't even designed to run off batteries for very long in the first place so it seems weird that they'd try and make them dtr's and netbooks.

On the other hand, more battery life is always better? You never know when you'll need it after all.

 

What's the driver situation like with AMD's switchable graphics?

AFAIK, Nvidia never did get Verde working with their 2nd generation switchable graphics (the pre-Optimus software-based switching generation), despite repeated promises.

 

Do you mean 'Hybrid Graphics'? Then, no. Drivers with switching have only been officially supplied by the computer manufacturer and not too often.

It might be because of the crap that's between Intel and nVidia, but don't actually know.

 

Both of those reasons would be enough for me to say no.

It's sad really... It's such a good idea, but none of these companies will work together on anything. The reason I suggested to wait on AMD's solution is because with their chipset, processor, and GPU, they have complete control over the whole experience. I'm just waiting on them to switch into gear and start putting out the switchable 6xxx series.

 

Optimus doesn't seem to have the same issue when running on a supported OS. (Windows 7)

Of course, if AMD's future CPUs and GPU's match up to the competition and battery life is decent then it would be the choice for me as well.

 

On the other hand, the fact that they have a Centrino, if not Apple, level of control over the platform, yet still can't do any better than Optimus over a year later, makes the AMD Vision branding kinda pointless...

 

AMD is very rapidly getting their ducks back in order. RV770 was the start of things on the GPU side... followed by their win in the ultramobile sector with Zacate. Bulldozer is going to be awesome. Plus they've got a whole new driver team with some pretty good coders.

 

Optimus isn't that bad. I thought it would be tough to get it running but nope, sure there is few issues, I have one with GTA IV but I managed to fix it.

The problem with new muxless dynamic switching is the Intel GPU is always on, so the application is likely to detect it rather than the piggyback nVidia card. They do include an auto update for any new game profile to be downloaded in CP itself. The other problem with it is the lack of 5xxM driver from nV site, but thankfully Acer have their own driver and it worked like a charm.

But the experience is seamless, the transition between GPU is almost lag free, sometime I do wonder if its actually switch. The profile in CP also let us choose which GPU to run with corresponding programs, and override it if necessary.

 

Sony has been offering it for a while on it's Vaio Z....

Basically:
When you need little graphics processing power the integrated card is used, when you need a lot of graphics processing power, e.g. games, renders the dedicated card is used.

The downside of automatic switching:
It can eat into battery life -> running an integrated card at full power for a short time can use less energy than running a dedicated card at less load for a short time.
Obviously, running either card at full load will kill battery life.

 

Wise people (only those are using it). [I couldn't resist starting a flamewar :<]

Back to the topic: If you are going to use Adobe's software, stay away from Optimus. Will save you headaches.

 

Not really last I checked there was no Photoshop for Linux (THE tools for photography) and GIMP is worse -> at least on Windows it fails at 20MP images when Photoshop runs fine with 100MP images.

Linux is for people who prefer free software and want an OS that they can take apart, nothing more.
It can be better than Windows especially if you take it apart at the code level and customize it accordingly, but else Windows is easier to use an manage for the average person.

 

In this point I totally agree with you. This is why my work machine still has Windows - no Adobe Premiere, After Effect, Photoshop and Audition for Linux is really dissapointing

 

First, you guys are awesome!

I never anticipated 3 pages of posts in the morning!

Thank you for your thoughtful replies, you've definitely helped my understanding a bit. However, I had a few questions.

What are MUX's? How do you anticipate the future of dynamic switching? My Dad's an old school computer guy (was working with commodores back in the day and helped me build a PC), and he's definitely in the camp that you buy a gaming laptop to game or a productivity laptop to get long batt life.I however wanted both out of a laptop, and so you can see why I want one of these technologies to work!

I'm looking to get a laptop by the end of the summer, so I don't necessarily have the time to wait for AMD to get back in the game, although if I could support AMD I would. I would love to run ubuntu for fun, but linux support for discrete graphics isn't a big deal as the integrated graphics solutions are quite excellent these days and I don't think I would game on it in Linux anyhow.

Is there a reason MBPs have been better on getting good video performance and battery life?

 

MUX (multiplexer) is the chip that combine both display output of the graphic chip and it is the one who do the switching, and it adds circuit complexity and also it use a bit of power as well. For further reading, read this and this.

By the look of it, nVidia might use muxless dynamic switching, I don't know what AMD have at their side

 

NVIDIA's is MUX-less. NVIDIA uses PCIe lanes to route the discrete THROUGH the output of the IGP.

AMD's solution isn't anything like that. The MUX has control over which stream is displayed and which card is activated. Also, with AMD's way, the un-active card can be completely disabled saving even more power in power-saving modes. With NVIDIA's way, the discrete can never be completely deactivated, only put to "sleep".