NVIDIA Optimus - Truly Seamless Switchable Graphics and ASUS UL50Vf
by Jarred Walton on February 9, 2010 9:00 AM ESTASUS UL50Vf Graphics Performance
This is the big selling point for including a discrete GPU. 3DMark shows a slightly larger difference between the UL80Vt and the UL50Vf, but all of the scores are close enough that driver differences can account for the changes. The G210M still isn't a particularly fast GPU, as it only has 16 SPs; as we mentioned earlier, we would have liked to see something like the GT220M that doubles the SP count. Even better would be a GT 325M (3x the SP count) or the GT335M (72 SPs). Any of these would also improve memory bandwidth by moving to a 128-bit bus. The G210M is capable of running pretty much any current game, but there will be times where you'll need to run at very low detail settings in order to get above 30 FPS.
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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.