NVIDIA Optimus Aims To Improve Battery Life on Notebooks

Introduction to NVIDIA OPTIMUS

When I first heard about the new technology from NVIDIA called OPTIMUS my thoughts went directly to the Transformers. Unfortunately this new technology won’t transform your laptop into a something that it’s not. What it does do however, is still a great feat. A few years ago NVIDIA released Hybrid SLI which allowed you to manually switch graphics engines. You had the choice to run either integrated graphic or a discrete graphics card. Problem was you had to manually switch, either people didn’t realize that or they didn’t know how to switch. It is estimated that only 1% of the computers that had the option, ever switched.

While integrated graphics work great for many things, gaming and many other 3D applications tend to suffer. A discrete graphics card on the other hand, excels at gaming and 3D applications. It could be considered overkill for many other tasks including web browsing and word processing on a laptop. The problem with running only a discrete graphics card on a laptop is battery life, you don’t get much of one. In steps NVIDIA OPTIMUS.

As shown above, typically you made a sacrifice in the past. Either you got long battery life and minimal performance or high performance and minimal battery life.

Using NVIDIA OPTIMUS you automatically receive the best of both worlds. Read on to find out more!