However such a mux does not always exist! Ideally this would be done by directly flipping a hardware switch, called a mux ( multiplexer). There are two main problems to solve in order to support optimus under linux:ġ) Currently we do not have a way to a priori know what outputs (displays) are connected to what GPU's.Ģ) The supposed optimus software, should perform the task of switching between the which of the two graphics processors drives your display. This GPU connects to a laptop display, or output port. The graphics system in a laptop has a GPU with some memory, in the case of an IGP, this memory may be a piece of system memory, but otherwise it is usually dedicated memory living on the GPU. It may require that the Nvidia GPU has the PCOPY engine. The precursor to this technology was 'switchable graphics,' in which the user could manually switch between the graphics card. This technology is intended specifically for laptops.
#Nvidia egpu drivers optimus full#
The advantage is that it does not matter if the software is in window or full screen, the dedicated graphics will also be activated.'Optimus technology' is a software solution for automatically switching between an integrated graphics chip or IGP (such as on onboard intel chip) and a more powerful graphics chip. That means it checks 3D apps in a list and then switches from one GPU to another accordingly automatically, which has its advantages and disadvantages like everything: on the one hand it is a disadvantage that if you don’t have the updated software and you run a program that is not in the list, the dedicated graphics might not activate and you would have a very low performance with the iGPU. Īs for the software, Advanced Optimus behaves more or less the same as Optimus. Thus, in addition to making the variable screen refresh technology available, it also eliminates the latency penalty that Optimus had, since the buffer will not now go through the iGPU but will be done directly in the dedicated graphics. In general, Advanced Optimus makes up for the shortcomings of the previous technology with a more modern and intelligent implementation, adapted to the new times (remember that Optimus dates from 2010). With Advanced Optimus NVIDIA seems to have found a way to get around this restriction, incorporating a dynamic mux that allows the laptop to switch between integrated and dedicated graphics without having to restart the computer simply, when you are on the desktop using the iGPU and run some 3D application, the mux turns on the dedicated graphics and starts using its IGP, which will be compatible with the variable refresh rate of the screen if it has one. In other cases they have managed to implement it using a multiplexer (mux), but to move from one system to another requires that the laptop be restarted, which is not very viable and that cancels the “automatic” feature that Optimus promises. The net impact of this has been that the adoption of variable refreshment technology in laptops has been very low, and in the cases that do have it, they do not have Optimus (not to use the IGP of the iGPU but that of the dedicated graphics) so it has been limited only to very high-end equipment. In 2010, when Optimus came to the fore, this was not a significant problem, but now with variable screen frequency technologies (FreeSync, Adaptive Sync, G-Sync) the tables have been turned since until the arrival of the Gen Intel Integrated Graphics 11 (found on Ultra Low Voltage Ice Lake processors) This feature was not supported on iGPUs. NVIDIA does not reveal how they have implemented this mux Advanced Optimus: G-Sync and Optimus together at lastĪlthough Optimus is very good and represents a great advance in terms of efficiency, something especially important in notebooks in order to save battery, it has always had a fairly specific drawback: the display controller it uses (IGP) is always that of the iGPU, which which means that the maximum you can do is limited by it.Advanced Optimus: G-Sync and Optimus together at last.
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