NVIDIA Optimus Technology Gets Official

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Laptops, as popular they might be, come with a few flaws. First of all battery life is not what we’d like it to be. Sure Apple has figured out a way to squeeze up to 7 hours of life from its built-in batteries but not everyone else can do that yet. The second important downside of some laptops is the graphics performance.

Graphics performance is closely related to battery life. The better the graphics card, the better overall experience we have but the faster the battery drains. That’s why we now have laptops that can use either the built-in graphics card or a powerful graphics card needed for various leisure and work-related activities around the house.

NVIDIA has unveiled a new system capable of dealing with integrated and dedicated graphics processors, the Optimus. You’ll say that some mean machines already have switches that help you move between the two graphics card and I’ll agree. But the Optimus technology here will do everything automatically for you. No need for remembering to switch on or off the graphics card. No need for closing apps before activating the switch.

The Optimus system “automatically, instantaneously, and seamlessly optimizes the notebook to offer the best performance or best battery life depending on the application.” That’s some very good news and we can’t wait to see it in action.

Some of our future laptops will surely sport this new technology. The Optimus will do everything for us and it will immediately respond to HD video and computer games by activating the powerful GPU we require to deliver the impressive graphics we expect. Then, when closing this kind of apps, the integrated card will take over thus reducing strain on our batteries.

We’re yet to find out what laptops will use this new Optimus switch system. For now just a few Asus models including the UL50 will be able to deliver an Optimus experience. You’ll be stuck with manual switching for a while but I have a feeling more manufacturers will want to see this latest creation of NVIDIA on their future machines.