cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Archives Discussions

Meteorhead
Challenger

PowerXpress 4.0

system requirements

First of all, forgive me for posting this here, but General Discussions is so underread.

I would like to ask what the system requirements of this feature is (HW and SW)?

Since it is announced and already tested, I'm sure this is not a secret anymore. I hope it works with my Mobility 5870 and Core-i5 M430.

Gratz to AMD for this feature! If this feature works with HW before Sandy Bridge and 6xxxM  than BIG GRATZ.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-PowerXPress-4-0-aka-BACON-vs-Nvidia-Optimus.55204.0.html

0 Likes
8 Replies
Meteorhead
Challenger

I have never seen such silence about a question 🙂 Does anyone know how to get this working or what hardware is supported? I could not find any relevant clues.

0 Likes

hi meteorhead,

Well I found this article according to which this technology was introduced way back in 2008. I would expect it to work on 5xxx series then.

http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/Press_Release_126233.aspx

0 Likes

The closest thing about this on the AMD website is this.

http://www.amd.com/uk/products/technologies/switchable-graphics/Pages/switchable-graphics.aspx

It ony says that it works with Mobility HD 5870, and with tiny letters at the bottom: Note: AMD Switchable Graphics technology must be enabled by the system manufacturer.

So I guess that I should check if ASUS has this enabled for the G73 series. Anyhow, the pictures I saw on notebookcheck (see first post), there were pictures about this technology in CCC. I thought it's a question of drivers or some addition (like Hydravision, which is a seperate install, but it appears in CCC also).

I'll check with ASUS if they support this feature. I read in the article, that this is PowerXpress 4.0, and I found articles abuot earlier versions and Hybrid Graphics, that incorporate ATi discrete and GMA in a CrossFire-like manner, but I think adding a GMA to HD5870M is only slower than standalone discrete. However 4.0 has instant graphics switching, and that would really extend the battery time of this laptop.

0 Likes

Some 3 weeks ago I opened a ticket on the ASUS support asking whether the chipset inside the G73J is capable of using PowerXpress 4.0, or more clearly the switchable graphics capabilty. The answre was: nobody ever asked us a question like that, give us a little time to look around. (Of course with different words) No answer since.

Anyhow, could someone from AMD tell me whether this chipset is supported? The test I saw was on a Sandy Bridge notebook, but that doesn't mean that older IGPs are supported also. Can you tell me if the one generation older Core-i5 IGP is supported or not?

Thank you in advance.

0 Likes

In the meanwhile let me address a different issue as well, which I have stated before but not many feedback has been given.

Catalyst fails to use PowerPlay properly. It is not the question of determining whether the machine is on battery or not, but it is messed up as it is. I have come to the conclusion that this bug mostly happens around putting the machine to sleep or hibernating it, specially when putting the machine to sleep (or hibernating) on power supply and waking up on battery or vice versa. In such cases PowerPlay goes completely crazy.

Here are two screenshots that prove how it does not work:

PowerPlay enabled // PowerPlay disabled

Forgive me for posting hungarian screenshots, but most important info are pictograms, self-evident or english. Even on maximum performance clock rates are dropped when on power supply.

Could someone writing drivers/Catalyst look into this issue.

0 Likes

Meteorhead, offtopic: I see a couple of very nice and useful gadgets at your screenshots. The one with GPU info and another with CPU load. Could you tell me what are they, please?

0 Likes

They are "CPU-V" and "GPU Observer".

ps: offtopic questions like this better go in private message. No harm done, just for future cases...

0 Likes

Thanks! My bad, I forgot about PM functionality.

0 Likes