switching between GPU's need help!

[Darkgundam111]

So i installed a fresh copy of windows 7 onto my alienware m11x r1 which does not use the optimus drivers for switching video cards. Before it was reformatted, it had this nividia icon on the tray that allowed me to switch GPU's on the fly. Now tho, I do not see it and cannot find any drivers/applications to install that would do this again. I checked dell's website for all the drivers but none of them did that. Also checked alienware, but they don't have this model since they moved their support to dell. Lastly, i checked nvdia but no luck there either. any ideas how to get that back? i really dont want to have to restart each time to change GPU in the bios

 

[ocgmj]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus-win7-x32-notebook-189.79.html

 

[Darkgundam111]

um i just stated that this is the r1 version of the m11x...which means that it does not use the optimus drivers.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

So i installed a fresh copy of windows 7 onto my alienware m11x r1 which does not use the optimus drivers for switching video cards. Before it was reformatted, it had this nividia icon on the tray that allowed me to switch GPU's on the fly. Now tho, I do not see it and cannot find any drivers/applications to install that would do this again. I checked dell's website for all the drivers but none of them did that. Also checked alienware, but they don't have this model since they moved their support to dell. Lastly, i checked nvdia but no luck there either. any ideas how to get that back? i really dont want to have to restart each time to change GPU in the bios

Switch on the fly? Like while they are in use? Why would you ever need to do that?

 

[Darkgundam111]

it was this nvidia application that allows you to switch from intel graphics to the 335m card in windows. on the m11x laptop, it allows you to shut off either the nvidia card or the intel card, which would allow you to either save battery or have higher performance depending on what I am currently doing.

edit: i have figured it out. just had to incorporate the new drivers into the old nvidia install package

 

[Cold Storm]

Glad you got it working. It's a great thing for Both Nvidia and ATI to set up this way to swap video card use.. My HP Touchsmart has the AMD version.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

Glad you got it working. It's a great thing for Both Nvidia and ATI to set up this way to swap video card use.. My HP Touchsmart has the AMD version.

I guess its helpful for laptop or something. My desktop GPU will drop to idle mode which only uses 16 W of power when I am not doing anything GPU intensive like gaming or Folding. All GPU's have done this for the last 5 or 6 generations and this switching is completely pointless for a desktop.