![]() ![]() That’s what the big fuss with KMS,DRM and Gallium3D is. Biggest of which is drivers being moved out of X into the kernel. There is crying about closed source slowing things, but there is still lots of action. Urg, please people read up on XOrg and what is happening. Cupertino still doesn’t support SLI, and has so far refused to make switching as (relatively) seamless as it is on Windows (the hardware supports it), so I wouldn’t be surprised if it will take a while for Apple to catch up. ![]() On the Mac OS X side of things – it all depends on Apple. Hopefully, the Linux NVIDIA driver will support this sooner rather than later, so we can enjoy Optimus on Linux as well. “Consumers no longer have to choose whether they want great graphics performance or sustained battery life,” said Rene Haas, general manager of notebook products at NVIDIA, “NVIDIA Optimus gives them both – great performance, great battery life and it simply works.”Ī small number of new ASUS laptops (four, to be exact) support the new technology. In previous iterations of dual-GPU laptops, both GPUs were connected directly to the display using multiplexers, which required the system to switch between two separate pipelines, causing flicker.įrom the press release and Optimus web page it doesn’t become clear whether or not it also supports Hybrid SLI (using both GPUs at once), but I’m assuming that NVIDIA thought of that too, despite not mentioning it explicitly. This eliminates the blank/flickering screen during the switch. The system works by basically having the discrete GPU send its framebuffer contents to that of the integrated GPU as soon as the former is powered on. The only problem spot here is that the system relies on application profiles that you silently download from NVIDIA – in other words, if you happen to run into an application or game without a profile, you might still need to power on the discrete GPU manually. It will detect when an intensive 3D application is started, and will power on the discrete GPU accordingly, without user intervention, without screen flicker, without logging in or out. NVIDIA’s Optimus technology delivers just that kind of functionality. Preferably, Hybrid SLI should be used so that you can use both GPUs at the same time for optimal performance – when needed. When you load up a 3D-intensive program (a game, probably), the discrete GPU should automatically take over, without noticeable delay or flickering if you close the game, and go back to browsing, the discrete GPU should power down. What you really want is that the soft and hardware know when it’s time to power on the discrete GPU, so that users don’t have to worry about that sort of thing. ![]() So, Windows currently has the easiest switching method, but it’s still not ideal. On top of that, it might be that some other project out there has already yielded better results – feel free to enlighten me. However, with the pace of Xorg and Linux development, the situation could already be different today. This experimental support still requires you to kill and restart the X server in order to get there, so it’s all rather crude. I’m not entirely sure what the situation is like on Linux, but from these recent Phoronix stories it would seem that there’s only experimental support for this. Then again, Mac OS X still doesn’t support SLI either, so little surprise there. Even though the hardware is fully capable of switching between the two GPUs “live”, Apple has never implemented the support for it in software, requiring you to log out if you want to use the discrete GPU and again when switching back. On Mac OS X, the situation is a million times worse. Upon switching, the screen would go blank for a few moments, et voilà . On Windows Vista and Windows 7, you needed to manually switch between the two via the power settings or the graphics tray icon. In Windows, that is.ĭespite many laptops already shipping with two graphics processors – a low-power integrated one and a discrete powerful one – software support for switching between the two has been a bit problematic. Today, NVIDIA introduced a technology called Optimus, which makes the switching process automatic and transparent. Notebooks with dual GPUs have been shipping for a while now, but switching between the fancy discrete GPU and the low-power integrated one hasn’t exactly been painless. ![]()
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