Mobile GPU Faceoff: AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics vs. NVIDIA Optimus Technology
by Jarred Walton on September 20, 2011 6:40 AM ESTVideo Demonstrations
With all of the discussion of problems and UI issues, I felt the inclusion of some videos showing exactly what I experienced were in order. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an 11 minute video ought to speak volumes, right? I’ve already covered most of the material, but I put together two videos, one showing various games and UI interactions on the Sony VAIO C and the second demonstrating similar use of the Acer TimelineX 3830TG. The first and likely more interesting video shows the gaming experience on the Sony laptop.
[Note: I’m still working on the Acer video; it should go up some time today, but there’s not a lot to see—the games I tested all run as expected.]
Again, without a different laptop, we can’t say how many of our complaints are specific to the Sony VAIO C and how many apply to AMD’s Dynamic Switchable Graphics in general. There haven’t been any major UI changes to AMD’s Catalyst Control Center lately, but there are almost certainly some performance, compatibility, and stability changes. Take the above video as a demonstration of what the Sony VAIO C delivers, and hopefully we’ll be able to test a more recent AMD driver in the near future.
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Filiprino - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
Huh... Sony sucks big on graphics driver section. Better forget their radeon card and OpenCL support?86waterpumper - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
The amd LLano solution is totally worthless as far as I'm concerned until they release some laptops with smaller sizes. If I am going to buy a honking monster laptop I'm not going to power it with a cripple and slow llano, I'm going to just get a i5 or i7. When they get some 12 and 13.3 stuff to market I'll get interested...duploxxx - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
That is up to OEM to design, there are lots of people these days who want large screen and low price, they seem to target Liano for that, I also want a 13-14"based Liano but can't seem to find it....Liano slow, yeah right for common tasks it is more then powerfull enough, as if one would care if a laptop boots 2 sec faster and firefox starts 0,5sec faster. The crapload of SW that OEM deploy on those machines already makes it horrible even on an i7 so called supper fast CPU....for the ultimate benchmark experience :D
storage these days is the slow factor in a laptop, unless off course you work with an Atom...
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
Filiprino, I don't know about all programs, but it is definitely possible to use OpenCL with the VAIO CA. You just have to switch to manual mode to get it to work, and you'll be running 11.1 drivers. I did get the Bitcoin GUIminer to work with the Sony as a test, for example, but it totally failed to detect the GPU when in dynamic mode. (Note: 68Mhash/sec isn't fast enough to be worthwhile of course, and given the pricing on BTC these days I wouldn't bother trying to get involved with the scheme. It's still a useful benchmark at times, though.)Filiprino - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - link
Thank you, although I'm more worried about the driver upgrading viability and the performance improvements they can bring :-/BryanC - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
Did I miss the battery life comparison?JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
I'm going to post that in the full review; this was intended to focus solely on switching technology, as it was already plenty long. In case you're wondering though, here are the numbers. Acer has a 66Wh battery and Sony has a 59Wh battery.Acer 3830TG Optimus:
Idle: 580 minutes
Internet: 461 minutes
H.264: 344 minutes
Acer 3830TG GT 540M:
H.264: 248 minutes
Sony VAIO C IGP:
Idle: 574 minutes
Internet: 417 minutes
H.264: 358 minutes
Sony VAIO C 6630M:
Idle: 415 minutes
Internet: 336 minutes
H.264: 276 minutes
fabarati - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
I'm pretty sure the AMD HD 6700-series are just the HD6600-series with higher clocks or GDDR5. They're all Turks-based.It's the HD 6500-series that are rebranded HD 5600/5700s (Redwood). Something that's also pretty obvious if you look at the core configurations.
chinedooo - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - link
Yea they are all the same 480 stream porcessor chips. But the 6770 has got higher clocks and gddr5. The GDDR5 makes a world of difference.duploxxx - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
I have a latitude e6520 i7 with NV QuadroThe GPU switch works well as long as the NV configuration has the right profile for the right game, if the profile isn't available you sometimes face issues. (just black screen, why at that point it doesn't run on the Intel GPU I don't know.....)
THe only way to avoid this is to add the exe to the profile, or to right click the application and select the GPU to run with. Works fine but i would expect this to be the same with ATI no?