Optimus vs. Iris vs. old-fashioned Intel Graphics (WAS: [TLUG]: laptop advice time...)

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 05:57:25PM -0400, Matt Price wrote:
>  so I feel I've narrowed it down to a Thinpad T430 or a System76
> Galago Pro (very different machines).  Before ordering I wanted to as
> what kind of experiences folks have had with the following graphics
> cards:
> 
> - Intel HD 4000 (the default choice on the T430)
> - NVidia NVS 5400M (fancy choice on the T430, uses Optimus, which I
> guess requires bumblebee to work properly)

Most of the systems have a BIOS option to force one or the other to be
active, so you could run linux using the nvidia all the time as far as
I know.  To save power using bumblebee or whatever replaced it some day
to switch to the nvidia only when there is a reason to would be more
efficient for sure.  I still haven't had time to try it out on mine.

> - Intel Iris Pro 5200, the only choice on the Galago

It's probably a bit faster than the HD4000.  Not sure how they compare.

> I'm not a gamer, and while I enoy watching movies on the laptop that's
> a very secondary funciton.  However, my son has been playing a lot of
> minecraft and is 10 years old, so will be 13 or so before this laptop
> dies.  He often asks to borrow my computer to play games, and I would
> lie him to be able to play at least a little.
> 
> What do you thin? Do you have any of these cards, are you satisfied
> with them, are they well supported under linux?

Well I still haven't tried linux on my new thinkpad, but I would expect
it to do reasonable well.  of course mine uses a quadro K2000M, which
is about twice as powerful as the NVS 5400M.  That was one of the reasons
I went with a W530 rather than a T530.

Of course anything is vastly better for gaming than intel video.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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