Optimus Tech?

Hey guys,
Hey,

So I received my Sager 5160 last week and I have to say its a great machine except for one detail: I don't know if my Optimus is working properly.

The LED light that indicates which GPU is operating constantly indicate that I am activating the iGPU. Even when I play Starcraft 2 or Team Fortress 2 I remain on the iGPU. Occasionally, I see the LED light for dGPU turn on, but thats rare.

Just to clarify, I do have the Optimus mode turned on. The button color is currently orange.

Can someone please clarify the situation for me. I spent some dough on this laptop and I want it to run the dGPU at least when I am gaming!

-G

 

Update:

This is my driver #:

8.17.12.6577

Can this be updated to fix the problem?

-G

 

The dedicated GPU kicks in when programs in it's profiles are run, if the app/game doesn't have a profile it's not going to run on the dedicated GPU.
You can manually set up a profile where needed also.

You can check out this App Optimus GPU State Viewer also to check status of the dGPU.

If you want to try a more recent driver revision with it check my signature link.

 

Thanks man,

Could you inform me how I can add a game into the GPU profile?

 

YouTube - Nvidia Optimus Feature on the Alienware M11x- R2

That video shows how to do it, I linked it at the point in the video where they show adding a profile to the Nvidia control panel.

 

You've been really helpful man. Thanks for guiding my step by step. The interesting thing is I did the proper settings, however, the LED lights just briefly switches over to the dGPU "orange" light and then returns to the iGPU "green" light after I apply the new settings.

When I go back to the game, the displays similar patterns. A brief switch from iGPU to dGPU and then returns to the iGPU. Am I misinterpreting something here?

If you need me to clarify on anything just ask and I'll reply. This is quite important for me.

 

Well that definitely sounds off, have you tried updating the driver at all? theres even a more up to date driver from Clevo, a 266 driver.
Something is clearly off if it's doing that, i'd throw a driver update at it next to see if it takes care of it, there was quite a few issues with Optimus on the earlier drivers that used it.

 

Man, you are a quick replier.

Does this driver look right?

v266.19 Windows 7/Vista 64bit | ACER Mobile - LaptopVideo2Go Forums

 

Give this one a try: Clevo driver 266.40 Mobile - LaptopVideo2Go Forums
The Clevo cards have a vendor branded subsys id so you need either an official Clevo driver or a modded inf.

 

Like the INF from your Sig?

 

I don't know the details of optimus, but it seems that it would only help if it's on battery. I know this isn't a proper fix, but until you and Atmosk can sort it out, why not disable optimus while plugged in and re-enable while on battery (to save battery life)? Your dGPU already downclocks itself heavily if it isn't being taxed, or it should, as that feature ought to be built into all mobile GPUs (as heat is quite often an issue with them, and high clocks while idle produces more heat than necessary).

That's about all I could say, and it's also assuming there's a hotkey to turn optimus on/off without the restarting of the PC being necessary.

 

Well, the way Optimus works is there isn't even actually a display connection to the dGPU, it's even only powered up when it's told to render something which it then passes to the framebuffer of the iGPU over PCI-E, it's a highly optimized form of the multi display shared rendering built into Windows 7 where a GPU can render something being output on a different display than what is actually connected to said GPU.

That being said, the dGPU will only render what it's actually told to, which is why it has profiles for games/apps, it's not taking the place of the iGPU for output, it's working in conjunction to the iGPU for rendering while the iGPU outputs to screen.

 

So Atmosk, you got Optimus to run on your laptop ?

 

No the 8130/8150 are not wired at all for Optimus, Display connected directly to the MxM GPU / iGPU disabled entirely. I've only used it on other machines I've worked on here and there, namely the Acer's with the GT 540M.

 

So then this brings my question, is it possible to disable optimus and use the Discrete GPU on its own? If it isn't, I don't think I'd want it; there has to be some overhead on it if it's doing what you say it's doing... though I'm sure it'd end up working sort of like an SLI configuration.

 

You'll always be using the iGPU on an Optimus configuration period, there is no physical connection to the dGPU at all, all of it's output is sent over PCI-E to the iGPU. Yes there is overhead though minimal due to it not actually consuming too much of the PCI-E bandwidth and there is a slight delay of what is reportedly 0.2 seconds per frame. .2 of a frame, not seconds, shouldn't be posting at that hour causes typos

Also as I mentioned, it uses tech built into Win 7 which so far only Win 7 has so you're stuck (for now) with that as your only OS choice if you want to actually use the dGPU for anything on an Optimus setup.

It's all a usage scenario, personal preference and what you plan to do with the machine, for me personally I prefer the singular dGPU setup though for many the Optimus setup would be preferred.

 

Hehe... Windows 7 can *bleep*. I prefer Vista. 7 annoys me >_>
I prefer single dGPU setup as well, now knowing what optimus is. Oh well, *re-sets eyes on P170HM though he knows he'll never get it*

 

Battery symbol:
Green is the Intel HD gpu.
Speed odometer symbol:
Orange is the Nvidia GeForce GPU.

-Make sure you update to the latest Nvidia GeForce Drivers.

- You do not need to push the VGA button. VGA button is orange, you are have Nvidia Optimus Technology enabled, and if it's green, then you have only Intel HD graphics enabled.

As for any temperature monitoring programs, you should close them because they conflict with the Nvidia Optimus Techology. It causes the green and orange lights to flicker back and forth. While it flickers, you cannot run a game. You should close it.

 

Ok, so it's just as I suspected. The current MXM port is incapable of offering Optimus support.

 

Is this number right?? 200ms extra delay?? due to the dGPU sending info to the iGPU which has the physical display port connected to it??
Thats a long time in the micro-electronics world.

If the dGPU can be accessed only through WIN7, then i would not be able to get eye candy running on an Ubuntu install. This makes me NOT want OPTIMUS. (But then the iGPU is itself powerful isn't it?? Still a N0 for me).

I had assumed OPTIMUS was some bios-based power-saving switching feature. I was wrong.

 

Ubuntu (and further Compiz) effects should be handled with ease by that iGPU.
But still Optimus is unsupported on Linux and won't take any advantages, on power saving as on better (discrete) graphics

At least, you could access Cuda processing in Linux, as I read somewhere...


And I think that delay should be wrong also...
How many computing cycles would it miss in 200 ms??

 

Let's just say, 200ms of lag in online play is unplayable by 98% of all players worldwide, and you're building yourself an auto 200ms latency? Ha!

If you said 0.02s (or 20ms), I'd consider it not bad.

 

I totally agree with you, but wasn't me who brought this number up!

And I was sincerely questioning that, it would be a lot of cycles... thinking merely on performance, 0.2 second latency would be appreciable for anything higher than 4 fps...

 

Nvidia Optimus Review - Notebookcheck.net Reviews Thats where the .2 number came from, I was posting late on being up for an extended period, what was meant to say was .2 of a frame delay which is actually only going to be noticeable lag when frame rates start to dip below 30fps, I'll go look for what other typos I have from posting at that hour.