NVIDIA Optimus - Truly Seamless Switchable Graphics and ASUS UL50Vf
by Jarred Walton on February 9, 2010 9:00 AM ESTASUS UL50Vf Overview
The ASUS UL50Vf is essentially the Optimus version of the UL50Vt, and the UL50Vt is the 15.6" version of the UL80Vt we liked so much. To be honest, we are a lot more interested in the ASUS UL30Jc—a 13.3" Optimus CULV laptop with an optical drive (some models will even ship with Blu-ray support in the near future). Here are the specifications for the UL50Vf.
ASUS UL50Vf Specifications | |
Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 (2x1.3GHz, 45nm, 3MB L2, 800FSB, 10W) Overclockable to 1.73GHz/1066FSB (Turbo33) |
Chipset | Intel GS45 + ICH9M |
Memory | 2x2GB DDR3-1066 (Max 2x4GB) |
Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce G210M 512MB (16SPs, 606/1468/1580 Core/Shader/RAM clocks) Intel GMA 4500MHD IGP Switchable NVIDIA Optimus Graphics |
Display | 15.6" LED Glossy 16:9 768p (1366x768) |
Hard Drive(s) | 320GB 5400RPM HDD |
Optical Drive | 8x DVDR SuperMulti |
Networking | Gigabit Ethernet Atheros AR9285 802.11n |
Audio | HD Audio (2 stereo speakers with two audio jacks) |
Battery | 8-Cell, 15V, 5600mAh, 84Wh battery "Up to 12 Hours" |
Front Side | None |
Left Side | Headphone/Microphone jacks 2 x USB HDMI Flash reader (MMC/MS/MS Pro/SD) Cooling Exhaust AC Power connection |
Right Side | 1 x USB 2.0 Optical Drive (DVDRW) Gigabit Ethernet VGA Kensington Lock |
Back Side | None |
Operating System | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit |
Dimensions | 15.4" x 10.4" x 1.05" (WxDxH) |
Weight | 5.2 lbs (with 8-cell battery) |
Extras | Webcam 103-Key keyboard with 10-key Flash reader (MMC/MS/MSPro/SD) Multi-touch touchpad Brushed aluminum cover ExpressGate OS (8-second boot) |
Warranty | 2-year global warranty 1-year battery pack warranty 1-year accidental damage 30-day zero bright dot LCD |
Pricing | $800 MSRP |
Obviously, there were some changes to the motherboard in order to work with Optimus. Specifically, ASUS was able to remove any multiplexers and extra signal routing from the UL50Vt design. However, those changes are on the inside and you can't see any difference looking at the exterior. Specifications remain the same as the UL50Vt/UL80Vt, and performance is virtually the same as the UL80Vt we tested. (There will be some minor differences due to the change in LCD size and the use of different drivers, but that's about it.)
Pretty much everything we had to say about the UL80Vt applies to the UL50Vf. The features are great, and Optimus makes it even better. You can overclock the CPU by 33% in order to improve performance, or you can run the CULV processor at the stock speed and improve battery life. Unlike Optimus, changing the CPU speed doesn't happen on-the-fly (unfortunately), but it is a little easier than what we experienced with UL80Vt. This time, instead of requiring a full system reboot, enabling/disabling Turbo33 only requires the system to enter suspend mode. In that sense, Turbo33 is sort of like switchable graphics gen2: it requires manual user intervention and takes 10 to 15 seconds to shift modes. Ideally, we would like to be able to switch the overclock without suspending, and even better would be the option to enable overclocking on AC power and disable it on DC power.
The UL50Vf carries over the aluminum cover on the LCD lid along with the glossy interior plastic and LCD. It also uses the same 1366x768 LCD resolution. Considering the larger chassis, we feel ASUS would have been better off increasing the LCD resolution slightly (1440x900 or 1600x900 would have been good), and we would have also appreciated a faster dGPU. With Optimus allowing the GPU to switch on/off as needed and a 15.6" chassis, we feel ASUS should have been able to get something like the GT 335/325M into the UL50Vf. After all, Alienware is managing to cram similar hardware into an 11.6" chassis with the M11x!
Before we get to the tests, we did encounter a few minor glitches during testing. First, we couldn't get x264 decode acceleration to work with the dGPU using Media Player Classic - Home Cinema. We could set the application to load on the discrete graphics, but MPC-HC apparently didn't know how to talk to the Optimus GPU and ended up running off the IGP. Since the GMA 4500MHD was more than capable of handling our 720p and 1080p x264 files, we're not too concerned with this issue. Another glitch is that CPU-Z refused to work; it would hang at the graphics detection stage. This isn't so much a problem with Optimus as a need for changes to CPU-Z—and very likely some other low-level tools that talk directly to the graphics hardware. (We didn't try any overclocking or tweaking of the GPU on the UL50Vf, but we suspect it might be a bit trickier than normal.)
Finally, when using the dGPU and playing games, we periodically noticed a slight glitch where the screen would flicker black for a frame. We couldn't come up with any repeatable test, but it seems like the problem may be related to the Copy Engine transferring incorrect data. This was not limited to any one title, but it occurred most frequently during our Empire: Total War testing (usually at least once every 60 seconds). It would hardly be surprising to find that there are a few bugs in the NVIDIA drivers, and most likely this is one of them. We didn't find the occasional "flicker" to be a serious issue and at present we really don't have enough information to say more about what might be causing the glitch we experienced. We'll do some additional testing to see if we can determine if this is more of a problem with specific games or if it happens on all games.
We've run an abbreviated set of tests with the UL50Vf. As mentioned, performance is virtually identical to the UL80Vt, the primary difference being the ability to immediately switch between discrete and integrated graphics as necessary. We will highlight both the old UL80Vt and the UL50Vf in our charts for comparison; you can see additional performance results for the UL80Vt in our previous review. All tests were conducted with the default graphics settings, so the discrete GPU is used when Optimus deems it beneficial and the IGP is used in all other cases. The gaming and general performance tests are run with Turbo33 engaged (33% CPU overclock) while battery testing was conducted at stock CPU speed.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
You can manually set applications to only use the IGP instead of turning on the dGPU, but to my knowledge there's no way to completely turn off the dGPU and keep it off. Of course, when the GPU isn't needed it is totally powered off so you don't lose battery life unless you start running apps that want to run on the GPU.macroecon - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Well, I was getting ready to pull the trigger over the weekend to buy a UL30Vt, but I'm glad that I waited. While this is not a revolutionary feature, it does make laptops that lacks it less valuable in my opinion. The video that Jarred posted toward the end of the article really demonstrates the value of on-the-fly GPU switching. I think that I'll wait for bit longer for Optimus, and also DirectX11 nVidia GPU, to hit the market. Thanks for the coverage Jarred!lopri - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Not to rain on NV's parade, but I'd much prefer if Optimus is doing its thing in 100% hardware. In an ideal world, software solution can do the same job as hardware solution, but I've seen some caveats on software solutions - on desktops, admittedly. Instead of trying to 'detect' the apps, detecting 'loads' and take care of it in hardware.Some might know what I'm talking about.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
The only problem with this is that the software is needed to work between Intel and NVIDIA hardware. There's also a concern about if you want something to NOT run on the dGPU (for testing purposes or to save battery life). With IGP reaching the point where it can handle most video tasks, you wouldn't want to power up the dGPU to do H.264 decoding as power requirements would jump several watts.Of course, if you could have NVIDIA IGP and dGPU it might be possible to do more on the hardware side, but Arrandale, Pineview, Sandy Bridge, etc. make it very unlikely that we would see another NVIDIA IGP any time soon.
acooke - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
OK, so this is awesome (particularly with Lenovo and CUDA mentioned). But how is the encrupted profile update driver yadda yadda stuff going to work with Linux?I'm a software developer, I work with CUDA (OpenCL actually), I use Linux. NVidia should worry about people like me because we're the motor behind the take-up of Fermi, which is going to be a significant source of cash for them. Currently I can do very basic OpenCL development while on the road with my laptop using the AMD CPU driver (despite having Intel/Lenovo hardware), but being able to use a GPU woul dbe a huge improvement (it's not that much fun running GPU code on a CPU!).
darckhart - Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - link
yes, i'm curious about this also.room1oh1 - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
I hope they don't fit any brakes into a laptop!MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Yeah, it's rather unfortunate that they said it should work like a hybrid, and they have the picture of a 2010 Prius in the slide. Just goes to show that car analogies don't work! They could have just drawn the parallel to your laptop battery--when you unplug the laptop, it starts using the battery with no user intervention.horseeater - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Switchable graphics are nice, but I want external gfx cards (or enclosures for desktop gfx cards) for laptops. Just plug it in when you're home, kill precious time playing useless junk, and use the igp when on the road.That being said, UL80-vt is reportedly awesome, and improvements are surely welcome, if they don't up the price.
synaesthetic - Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - link
I want external GPUs also, but I want one that can use the laptop's LCD display rather than forcing me to plug in an external display. After all, external displays aren't portable, but a ViDock isn't terribly large.