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NVIDIA Shows Off "Optimus" Switchable Graphics For Notebooks
Vigile writes "Transformers jokes aside, NVIDIA's newest technology offering hopes to radically change the way notebook computers are built and how customers use them. The promise of both extended battery life and high performance mobile computing has seemed like a pipe dream, and even the most recent updates to 'switchable graphics' left much to be desired in terms of the user experience. Having both an integrated and discrete graphics chip in your notebook does little good if you never switch between the two. Optimus allows the system to seamlessly and instantly change between IGP and discrete NVIDIA GPUs based on the task being run, including games, GPU encoding or Flash video playback. Using new software and hardware technology, notebooks using Optimus can power on and pass control to the GPU in a matter of 300ms and power both the GPU and PCIe lanes completely off when not in use. This can be done without being forced to reboot or even close out your applications, making it a hands-free solution for the customer."
I knew if I just held off upgrading my Orchid Righteous 3d (Voodoo 1) card long eoungh discrete 3d cards would become relavent again. You guys with your fancy Banshee cards can suck it.
Transformers jokes aside
This article is ruined for me :(
I guess when they have dual CPU notebooks with full size keyboards and 21" displays, I might be more interested in them. But I'd also want solid state hard drives and hdmi cables to wire them to the TV...
these guys are close...
http://hothardware.com/News/Eurocom_launches_QuadCore_XEON_Based_Notebook_/
But oddly, I would like to have an SSI EEB desktop case, that lies flat, like old PCs used to...
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But that's my Prime form of entertainment!
"Optimus can power on and pass control to the GPU in a matter of 300ms"
That's good. I'm tired of finishing before my video player can render the first frame.
I believe the latest model MacBook Pros have been doing this for at least a year.
...I'm all for it. But by how much will it extend the battery life? And when they say it will "Drastically" change the notebook market I doubt that; netbooks folks won't care about 3D and Desktop Replacement folks don't care if their machine is plugged in. Mabye in a smaller segment of mobile gamers this will make a difference.
Namaste
Doesn't Nvidia already have something like this in their HybridSLI technology? I remember reading about it in the manual for my last motherboard, but haven't ever used it since I don't have a discrete card in that machine. Is this the same thing, just applied to laptops?
Or a rebranding to create buzz?
I would have thought that, instead of switching between a 'low power' video chip, and a 'high power' GPU, they would have concentrated on just making the Nvidia graphics cards use lower power when not doing things like rendering 3D graphics, or decoding video? I mean, mobile CPU's have some smarts built into them to allow them to vary how much power they consume, can't they do that with GPUs?
For years, the proprietary NVIDIA drivers for linux have been using a feature called powermizer that changes the performance of the GPU based on what the PC needed. E.g., under normal conditions, the GPU is underclocked but when you run an openGL window or run a game, the GPU bumps up into full speed. In principal it sounds like a great idea, but it's been really annoying to wait around for what seemed like at least a year for NVIDIA to get it to run well enough with a composite manager like compiz. For a long time, things like highlighting text in firefox and then dragging it led to flickering of the screen, or the new kde has composite things built right in which didn't work well. During that period we had to do things like fool the GPU into running full tilt all the time because NVIDIA didn't give us an option to switch powermizer off until AFTER they fixed the problems with it.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Now give this to me in a 10" notebook.
The current progress of Linux hybrid graphics.
There has been a lot of progress in this area the past few weeks. Wonder if this will let NVIDIA switch gpu's without restarting X.
I see a lot of hacking that will be necessary to make something like this work. It doesn't seem like something that would automate easily unless it used some kind of profiles system.
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..but dont ATI cards ALLREADY do this if you set up the CCC right?
I have suffered from one of the multiple-display-device solutions, in the form of an Alienware M15X, so Optimus sounds like a huge step forward.
While in theory it was nice to have both a battery-friendly Intel GMA and a reasonably powerful Nvidia GeForce card in one (relatively) portable package, in reality it was lousy. As suggested by TFA, you had to reboot to switch between them, whether running Windows XP or Vista. That would have been bad enough, but wait, there's more!
This effectively meant that I could never switch, because us mere users were not permitted to authorize UAC prompts or do "admin" things under XP. Yes, you needed administrator-level access to switch between display devices. I don't know why, maybe because it involved changes to startup files. Huge software limitation there, as well as a shortcoming of our boneheaded IT rules.
But you really shouldn't have to reboot to switch devices.
So, on one hand you have a powerful graphics notebook when its primed (aka Optimus Prime). And on the other hand, you can turn it off and it becomes a cab over semi truck.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
I am a Thinkpad T500 owner with switchable Intel/ATI, and it is a nice feature even that I need to reboot and change the mode at the BIOS to use one or the other chipset on Linux (I have not tried the recent X server restart experiments), I use more than 95% of the time the Intel IGP, but I still consider this software switching a horrible hack. Why do not design efficient chips (ATI/NVIDIA) able to power down parts of it when not using advanced features?
This is like putting two processor like the most power hungry Intel chip and an Intel Atom, and build software to switch from them when needed. no, you add power management features the the processor and only use one
Please wake me when a company has brought the GPU on die.
Yes, we can talk about hardware without making a bunch of stupid jokes about its name*.
One of the great features of the Optimus chipset is its pipelining architecture, called the "Convoy". With this system a number of pending GPU tasks can be stored into containers, and the GPU hardware will process them quickly, moving the data to its destination, transforming it as necessary, etc. But the hardware apparently kept dying on them during the demonstration: they were able to get it up and running again each time, but it happened at least three times.
Rumors are already spreading about the planned successor technology, known simply as "Ultra". It will basically be a beefed-up version of "Optimus"... Though there are rumors it won't be quite as flexible.
AMD is working on their own competing product, called "Hot Rod" - it really hasn't gained much of a following so far, though. I've also heard about something called "Ironhide" - apparently it's designed to provide a GPU for processing functions on headless systems...
(* Doesn't necessarily mean we will...)
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Where is it? External PCI-Express slot on the laptop - some kind of high end, many many pin plug to go to an external, powered '3D brick' nothing eventuated :/
This is a total no brainer. A definite buy. What else can a transfan ask for? Kudos, Nvidia. 50 cents per post. $)
ATI already has high-powered GPUs like the 5870 that drop to 27-35W when not gaming (which is probably not too far off the power consumption of these GPUs) without having to switch to another GPU. I guess this switching thing is probably designed to compete power-wise with ATI.
...in 2014!
I am not devoid of humor.
This is good in principle but i doubt nvidia can actually execute it successfully. Even in their chips now they have something called "powermizer" that is suppose to throttle the GPU up and down depending on load... the problem is when it is set to "low" it runs like garbage and it takes too long to change to high -- most likely after you needed it -- like to open a giant window, or drag windows. its garbage really.
On your MB? What about your discrete USB ports?
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