IDF: Switchable Graphics Could Give Laptops An Extra Hour Of Battery Life
San Francisco (CA) - Want to get an extra hour of battery life out of your laptop? At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel’s executive vice president and general manager of the mobility division, Dadi Perlmutter, demonstrated switchable laptop graphics that promises to cut power consumption by approximately one-third. In some cases, this could add an hour or more of battery life to the average laptop.
Switchable graphics will be included in Intel’s upcoming Centrino 2 mobile platforms. From inside the operating system, users will be able to switch between the discrete graphics card and the internal Intel graphics processor (IGP). So anyone playing a graphically intense game can turn on the discrete card and then throttle down to the integrated chip for basic office tasks.
In an onstage demonstration, Perlmutter and his assistant used a Sony laptop with a discrete Nvidia card and the Intel integrated graphics chip. Running the discrete chip, the laptop was consuming approximately 25 watts of power. This usage dropped about 9 watts to 15-16 watts after switching to the discrete chip. Perlmutter and his assistant exclaimed that this could add an hour of extra battery life.
Intel showed a graph of the power usage before, during and after the switch and there was a brief spike in power usage. Perhaps this is from both graphics chips working at the same time. After several seconds, power usage dropped significantly as juice was cut from the discrete chip.
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Hell,having this work in my CPU or GPU at my desktop would even be nice...
Damn thats innovative. Great for Laptops and such.
This is a must for AMD/ATI motherboard + 4870. The idle power draw for 4870 is way too high for comfort.
the sony sz series has had this for awhile. When you boot up the computer you can pick "speed" (dedicated) for more graphic power or staminia (shared) for better battery power.
"Running the discrete chip, the laptop was consuming approximately 25 watts of power. This usage dropped about 9 watts to 15-16 watts after switching to the discrete chip"
ffs guys this is like the third big mistake you have made from the IDF news....
So Funy
). Sony has been doing this ages, with Geforce 7300m and Intel GMA I forgot. Then AMD make big news with this power switch, Nvidia Follow, last but not least Intel.