Nvidia Optimus – things you should know about it

I already wrote yesterday about Nvidia’s Optimus, a technology that allows seamless graphics switching between integrated and dedicated graphics on different types of mobile devices.

Hybrid netbooks and laptops have been around for a while. But in most cases, they came with some flaws.

First, you had to change manually between the two modes and even restart the device (on the earlier versions).

Than, you had to change between profiles and wait for the computer to adjust. Thus, each time, you were the one deciding whether to use one or another of the graphic solutions in your device.

Problems with standard graphic switching

Nvidia’s Optimus does it different, and better: it decides by itself what to use and switches between the two graphics automatically. So Optimus is designed to be invisible, working in the background and you as the user won’t even feel it. There’s no need for rebooting, changing between profiles or closing applications. But you’ll notice the performance differences.

But Optimus is not just a convenient technology, but also one that will allow better life-time for your device, as it decides when the more powerful and power-hungry graphics are needed and only use them at those moments.

How exactly does the technology work is a little bit more complicated, but, keeping it easy, it can detect use of DirectX, DVXA or CUDA calls that require using the dedicated graphics and enable it (via Netbooked). A more detailed and technical explanation can be found on Anandtech and Bit-Tech . Also, check the video below to see the technology in action.

Nvidia’s system currently works only with Intel processors and supports multiple platforms. Like you can see below, PineTrail Atoms and Ion2 are there too, so we might see some interesting hybrid netbooks in the near future. As for laptops, Asus already has 5 new models with Optimus.

Only Intel platforms supported so far

All in one, Nvidia’s Optimus is the best in terms of hybrid-graphics management so far and it will bring quite some improvements in terms of graphic performances for mobile computers, without sacrificing the much needed autonomy.

Optimus offer performances without sacrificing autonomy

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Tags: Intel Atom, Nvidia Ion, Nvidia Ion 2, Nvidia Optimus, Pine Trail

Last updated: September 29, 2011 | Published: February 10th, 2010 | See the comments or add yours!