Continuum and Nvidia Optimus

[Guest AF]

I recently bought an Asus u35jc laptop that comes with nvidia optimus system. It means that this notebook has 2 gpu's, nvidia and intel.

 

However I'm only able to run continuum with the intel one, which gives me poor fps (10-50). When opening continuum, the nvidia gpu should take over but currently it doesn't even though I've set continuum to run with nvidia card via nvidia control panel.

 

Any tips how to get this thing to work?

[🜲 Samapico]

Well, Continuum has very poor hardware optimization overall... You could try different options in the 'view->advanced options' menu, especially the 5 checkboxes at the bottom. Software emulation usually gives the most FPS with modern PC's, but you might find a combination that takes advantage of your GPU better.

[🜲 PoLiX]

Sadly doing some research, sounds like Continuum isn't the only game having issues with this. Almost any older game is having the problem, even a few more recent releases (07-08ish). Most people have just set it to only used the nvidia gpu for all games when playing it, and have reported the same issues with the intel gpu that low end games run like crap on it.

 

I'll keep lookin around, but it sounds like that might be your best bet for the time being.

 

But don't feel too bad, some people are reporting Optimus constantly crashes their computers when they goto play games. Atleast yours is working

[🜲 Samapico]

Question: What would be the advantage of having 2 GPU's?

[Dr Brain]

Question: What would be the advantage of having 2 GPU's?

 

Presumably the intel GPU is very power efficient, and the Nvidia one is beefy. If that's true, then you'd get good game performance while still getting good battery life doing every day things like word processing.

[Guest AF]

Question: What would be the advantage of having 2 GPU's?

 

Presumably the intel GPU is very power efficient, and the Nvidia one is beefy. If that's true, then you'd get good game performance while still getting good battery life doing every day things like word processing.

 

Yeah it's supposed to work like that. Optimus just is damn buggy. Took me like 2 hours to find proper drivers and 1 hour to get JK II: Outcast to run on nvidia card. Works now though and I even tweaked the game to run on widescreen

 

But back on the matter of my poor ss fps: Ticking software emulation button boosted fps quite a bit and now I can properly play! It still isn't using nvidia gpu but who cares I might even save some electricity this way. Thank for your help, I really appreciate it!

[JoWie]

I used to have issues with Optimus until they released a good driver, now I never have any trouble with Optimus. I tried a couple of versions and 260.99_win7x64 works great for me.

Some driver versions released by Nvidia are really bad, http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/ is a good place to find out if a particular new version works good.

When you install a different driver you may want to run a tool like Driver Sweeper to make sure all old files are cleared.

 

When using the Intel card continuum runs between 40-50 fps with no issues. Most old games do not even require the Nvidia card, like Left 4 Dead, and still work great.

Ironically, Firefox 4 uses the Nvidia GPU. But I just use the GPU switch on my keyboard when I am on battery to disable this.