The battery life of laptop computers is one of the important factors when choosing it, because its basic function is to be able to carry it and use it wherever we want, so the more their independence, the better. Of course, this depends not only on the battery, but also on the performance of its hardware, but technology must be developed to improve its efficiency.
And one of these technologies is NVIDIA Optimus.
What is NVIDIA Optimus Technology?
NVIDIA describes it as: "This technology cleverly enlarges the notebook and provides the best performance of the graphics you need, when you need it. All while extending battery life to take advantage of your long-term entertainment."
Obviously, this does not tell us or explain anything. They describe it as a battery saving technology and that is why, How it works
The essence of this technology is that with software (called IGP, or Integrated Display Controller) is able to detect when we use a 3D system that requires high graphics power and when not. All he does is use truth for the laptop to combine and separate graphics at the same time to enable and disable one or the other as needed.
In this way, when we use a 3D program that requires the power of graphics the software will run dedicated graphics, which you use a lot, but if not, it will activate and will start to use an integrated one, which has very low usage and, therefore, helps to conserve battery. Because why are dedicated graphics activated that use so much when it's not needed?
It is worth mentioning that in order to enjoy NVIDIA Optimus technology it is important that the laptop be fitted with graphics integrated into the processor in addition to the dedicated graphics, compatible graphics GeForce GTX 850M and above (including the new GTX 1660 Ti). An active system also needs to be Windows 7 or higher.
What are the benefits of this technology?
NVIDIA Optimus works well completely automatic, so it does not require user interaction, which is a first aid since the transition between the GPU and dedicated graphics is done automatically and, therefore, we will always save battery when we are not running programs that require graphics power. In addition, this process is performed in the background and without interruption in any way with what the user is doing.
In fact and when it does matter, if you're playing for instance – so you're using dedicated graphics – and you still have a small battery, Optimus will not switch to using iGPU, the only thing that will significantly reduce the performance of the game, is to save the battery. In this case, we will continue to use dedicated graphics to do excellent work until the battery runs out, maintaining a philosophy of not disturbing the user's output.
