NVIDIA Optimus technology switches laptop 3D graphics on-the-fly

NVIDIA moved laptop graphics technology a step forward today with the announcement of its Optimus technology. In short, this allows a laptop to switch between integrated and discrete 3D graphics chipsets on-the-fly, without the need to restart Windows.

Switchable laptop 3D graphics are nothing now, but almost all Windows solutions to date have all required a reboot to take effect with Windows — far from convenient if you’re in the middle of some work. Sony did come up with a slicker solution for its VAIO Z Series laptops, but this still involved a physical switch and a few seconds’ downtime while the GPU was reconfigured.

NVIDIA developed a precursor to Optimus for the Apple’s current MacBook Pro range, but switching between the GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT chipsets on still required a logout under Mac OS.

NVIDIA Optimus, on the other hand, is completely transparent and automatic — the hardware decides with GPU is best-suited to the task in hand and switches processing back and forth accordingly. The most obvious benefit of this is better battery life if you need occasional access to more graphics grunt when out and about — frugal integrated graphics will handle the day-to-day productivity work, but the discrete chipset will kick in if you fire up a game or a Flash-heavy website.

The technology can be manually overridden to force one mode, which is just as well as Optimus requires software support for automatic switching. Windows 7 is also the only supported operating system at the moment, but it seems certain that next-generation MacBook Pros will get an NVIDIA refresh before too long.

Optimus-enabled laptops are expected to be in full force at CeBIT, but it looks like ASUS is first out of the trap with five models to use the technology — UL50Vf, N61Jv, N71Jv, N82Jv and U30Jc.

We suspect that we won’t know too much more about how well Optimus performs until we can put it to the test in a review laptop, but until then, here’s a blog post from one of the technology’s inventors and here’s an NVIDIA video that explains a bit more about it. And aren’t you impressed that we got this far into the story without mentioning Transformers once? Oops…

[ NVIDIA]