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A Messy Transition: Practical Problems With 32bit Addressing In Windowsby Ryan Smith on 7/12/2007 12:00 PM EST
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instant - Saturday, July 21, 2007 - linkCould the writer please detail what, exactly, is wrong with XP-64bit edition?
Having run it since it was released and never had a problem with it, I would be interested in knowing what problems I should have experienced.
BUL - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - linkA few things I've found about /3GB in XP...
1) In terms of "consumer" OS's, XP Pro is the only one to support it. (XP Home and W2K Pro DO NOT!) Vista has a different method, outlined in the article.
2) If you change boot.ini, make sure you add a "3GB" boot option to your operating systems, not just change the one entry to /3GB. If a new driver gets installed that doesn't like /3GB, you could be left without the ability to change boot.ini back. (I can't find any info on whether /3GB affects Safe Mode, however safe mode may run in "3GB" mode!) So, unless you have the ability to WRITE to NTFS partitions outside of Windows, you may be stuck if you don't. See http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/catia/catia/catia...">http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/catia/catia/catia... for how to do it...
Now, personally, I feel that a limitation like memory shows the "men from the boys" in terms of programmers. Windows and "endless memory" has allowed for bloatware for far too long and allowed for sloppy, inefficient programming... Just think back how many games & other programs could run on an XT with 640KB of RAM because the programmers wrote highly efficient code. (Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS was written primarily in assembler; Quattro Pro could open even larger spreadsheets than 1-2-3 because it utilized pseudo-virtual memory).
Now we've come full-circle into the world of Windows, and some of these programs now have to become more efficient. That's what programmers are paid to do... Reply
Anorax - Monday, July 16, 2007 - linkOn some of the larger maps in AW2 the game will occasional crash to desktop and leave an error window saying it has exceeded the 2GB memory space. Not that helpful but at least it tells you why it crashed. Reply
the Chase - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - linkThank you so much for this article. I had a post awhile back in the forums asking for help on why in Vista I couldn't even run PR for bf2 unless I turned down the texture setting to Medium.
Never figured it out though people here did offer some good ideas for fixes. After reading this article I knew this is what was going on. I searched on the Net and found out how to use Visual Studio C++ to modify the Bf2 executable. Problem solved! (I have the 64 bit version of Vista).
And to think I was ready(thinkeng about anyway) going to buy another 2 GB's of memory to try and cure the problem. Thanks again.
P.S. I also did the same fix for XP pro 64 and now PR runs much smoother than before in that OS also. Reply
spookware - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkJust wanted to mention that the description of how windows uses memory is correct for XP and previous versions but it is not quite how windows vista works.
Specifically, vista does not automatically take the upper 2GB of adress space for the kernel any more. It instead grows the kernel adress space downard on demand. Allthough the associated switches (/3G) have the same prupose in vista what they are setting is actually the upper maximum for the kernel adress space.
Magumi - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkI guess this means that if I want to buy a computer to last me at least three or four years, I need to get 64bit Vista and 8GB of RAM and hope that drivers and incompatibilities get resolved soon. Reply
Greyhead - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkRyan, great article. Some other posters mentioned the use of the /PAE on servers. I recently discovered that MS recommends NOT using the /3GB switch in conjunction with /PAE. I followed their advice on a large SQL server we have and saw immediate positive results. The problem with /PAE /3GB combination is that when the OS is limited to 1 GB, there is not enough room for the size of the heap needed to support the /PAE option! This can be viewed using performance monitor - selecting "memory" options and then viewing total PTEs available (Page Table Entries). There are MS articles that describe the minimum PTEs needed, and before I changed our server it was way under the minimum. We had stupid errors on the server - blue screens, "not enough memory" errors when transferring files to another machine. Once the change was made, these problems disappeared. 2003 server has a more tunable /3GB switch using the /USERVA switch. There are technet articles which provide guidance on it's usage.
Keep up the great work -
-bill Reply
redpriest_ - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkbinary is illegal. Reply
Kougar - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkThe moment I saw the title I was thinking of Supreme Commander. I particularly enjoy the insanely huge 8-player games, but it only took about 40 minutes before these would crash... oddly enough they did not always crash either in some situations, making the crashing appear random and only confusing my attempts to troubleshoot this game. It would have been quite appreciated that this issue would have at least been mentioned in the game's readme file, if nothing else.
Having (very luckily) stumbled across MadBorris's thread I made the modifications to XP and SC has been running since. I have not run into any instability or issues with XP configured with the /3gb switch for what it is worth. Am I wrong in that users with video cards featuring smaller onboard memory sizes will have an "advantage" with this problem? There is a large difference between a 320mb GTS and 740MB GTX, or heaven forbid a 1GB HD 2900 card? And while on the subject does a dual-GPU configuration (and therefore dual VGA memory) make things even worse? Reply
Ryan Smith - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkYes to the first question. To the second question I believe that's also a yes, but I don't have a system configured to test that theory. Reply
miahallen - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - linkWhat I found extremely interesting is that you had problems modifying your boot.ini file for a lsrger than 2.6GB app space. I have an almost identical configuration, and have modded almost all my games headers, and my boot.ini is set to 3GB app space. When I modded the boot.ini, I was unaware of the possible problems, but since it didn't cause any, I've been perfectly happy with it.
A8N-SLI Delux
Opty 165 @ 2.5GHz
Vista x86
I've modded the headers for:
Dark Messiah M&M
Silent Hunter 4
Thanks Ryan, for the great article!
MadBoris - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - link
I've modded the headers for:
Dark Messiah M&M
Silent Hunter 4
This should be made clear to people.
If an application is not Large Address Aware there is usually very good reason the developers did not include it that way. There maybe things you break in the game or cause stability problems by adding it.
So people should not be just adding this to all their games, especially considering many games don't come close to the 2GB ceiling in the first place, so their is no benefit only potential negatives. Reply
ChristopherO - Monday, July 16, 2007 - linkThis is true... One shouldn't go setting the binary flag because they *can*.
I will however confirm that C&C3 and FSX run into the 2GB barrier. FSX is fine once it is patched.
However, C&C3 is so poorly written that it can easily pass 2GB and run into the revised 3GB barrier on any multiplayer map with the maximum number of AI and/or opponents. Detail settings as low as the "medium" preset do nothing to alleviate this problem.
Unfortunately C&C apparently has absolutely no code to purge and re-use memory as I've been in huge games, on the downward slope in terms of remaning opponents/units, and the app still hits a revised 3GB memory space and crashes.
As a developer myself, memory management is *not* that complicated. It takes some forethought, but the EA people apparently never bothered. This is a huge letdown since I've been a C&C fan since the first game came out my first year of college. Reply
miahallen - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - linkI have to add one more thing about my system, may be important.....most of my games I play at 2048x1536, as opposed to you test rig at 1600x1200. That and you were using Vista Ultimate, I'm using Home Premium. Do you think this is what is effecting the results? If so, Home Premium (or even Home Basic) is the x86 OS of choice for gamers, not Ultimate! Reply
miahallen - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - linkI was hoping you would comment on this Ryan, do you think the difference in our boot.ini mod was due to the version of Vista we run? Any thoughts? Reply
sheh - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link...and disturbingly it doesn't set off any sort of multiplayer cheat detection in the game in spite of the fact that we have modified the executable in a very visible way.
The game probably checks the code (and maybe data) section(s) in memory, and not the actual EXE file (makes sense considering you can use memory patchers). The header might not be important for cheat prevention. Reply
MadBoris - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link
...and disturbingly it doesn't set off any sort of multiplayer cheat detection in the game in spite of the fact that we have modified the executable in a very visible way.
Yeah, I remember thinking that the first day I did it, actually in those days it was Securom protected which I was actually more suprised about bypassing. But seriously the exe header should not be something that cheat protection should look for. I can only say glad it didn't or crashing would be a constant problem. ;) Reply
atlr - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkI thoroughly enjoyed this article. Good job. Reply
atlr - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkA lot of good comments have helped edit and tune this article too. (meh, not this one though) Yayyy, community. Reply
JetBlack69 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkFrom a programming perspective, what is a programmer to do? I assume this can happen in a program when "new" returns NULL because the program is out of memory, but what can a program do gracefully?
I assume it could just display an error message, but if it were during a game, how could it handle it gracefully and not crash or give an error message? Would it lower the texture detail or remove unneeded objects on the screen? Reply
titan7 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkThere is nothing you can do. If you ship a game you could test it and ensure it doesn't run out of memory (e.g. GameCube has just 24megs of system memory and the last Zelda looked great. Quite a ways away from 2048megabytes PC games run into!), but what about a mod?
When the application starts just allocate 512 megabytes or whatever you feel is reasonable. When new throws an exception free that memory, display a warning you're low on memory and need to upgrade to Vista64, and continue. When it new fails again one microsecond later you're screwed so display a message to the end user along the lines of "I told you so!" End users really like that type of thing. ;)
You could get a bit fancier by replacing all units with simple cubes or something, but all that does is delay in the inevitable a bit longer. Reply
ncage - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link1) First step is to detect which OS you are using at startup. Is it 64 bit os or not?
2) You SHOULD never code your application around a 2GB memory limit. It is very bad coding practice. Going through thorough examples in a short post like this isn't very practicle
3) Some higher level langauge/constructs abstract this away from you. For example if you are using .Net CLR you don't really have to worry about this unless maybe your doing some crazy pinvoke stuff which in most cases you shouldn't be doing anyways. Of course if your doing VB6 your never going to get around it anyways because vb6 is only 32 bit.
4) If you are doing C++ or assembly with windows then you can use the GlobalMemoryStatus() Function to Effectively see how much available address space you have. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkThe key to any of this is monitoring how much of the virtual address pool is in use; there should be an API call to ask Windows this. The easiest thing to do would be to give a warning at 1.9GB or so and then either do nothing, trigger a crash early, or attempt to reduce detail or flush space to stay below the 2GB barrier. The warning is the easy part, the hard part is preventing the crash, and I don't honestly believe anyone can or will be preventing crashing. Reply
yacoub - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkI just wish we had a better solution than Vista. Sure we can use 64bit XP but that's only going to last how much longer with full patch support from MS?
If Vista wasn't such a pile and didn't perform worse in games when using equivalent hardware as the same system running XP, it wouldn't be such an unappealing alternative.
And even so, when running 4GB of RAM, how much over a LargeAddressAware flagged game with the 3GB boot.ini switch are you really gaining by using 64bit OS? Not much, really. We first need motherboards that are happy running 8GB of RAM, RAM cheap enough to buy 8GB for a reasonable price (which is not too hard with DDR2 2GB DIMMs right now), and do so at full performance/speed settings.
Really it's not just a move to a 64bit OS, it's also a move to 8GB of RAM.
OR it's simply having developers who code their games to work properly within 3GB of addressable RAM. Reply
instant - Saturday, July 21, 2007 - linkHow many more patches do you need for XP 64bit anyway?
As long as the games work for it, why care about microsoft updating "security" hotfixes or not.
Tegeril - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkArticles like this make me very glad that I opted to go with 64bit Vista. All my hardware is supported at this point with stable drivers (we can argue the Creative X-Fi, but it works fine). I'm just amazed that people saw this coming and yet we have games that just die because of the problem. 64 bit isn't as bad as people make it out to be regarding compatibility :D - except iTunes and Quicktime :( Reply
halfeatenfish - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkHow do the *nix variants deal with this same issue? Do they even have it? Can someone shed some light, especially in terms of OS X... Leopard, if anyone knows anything there. But Tiger info is just as good. Reply
titan7 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkThey all do the same thing for 32bit. Bu generally speaking *nix has been 64bit for years (decades) so if it is a problem just run the 64bit version of everything. And being more cross platform their code tends to have less hacks like you get in Windows apps that assume there is an extra bit available on every pointer. A single bit! Bah, we're talking about billions of bytes and elite programmers are trying to squeeze every last bit out of their application at the expense of future compatibility. LAME. Reply
The Boston Dangler - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkOSX is a 64-bit system, *nix ymmv Reply
MadBoris - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkCool article Ryan. Good to see these issues getting more global attention.
Since 32 bit seems it is here to stay for a lot longer than we want it to, and with software bloat continuing, this will hopefully continue to put pressure on driver devs to write better drivers that can handle >2GB addresses without issue. So that people can use the /3Gb switch without concern. I personally have never had problems with /3GB with any of my hardware/drivers but certainly 'less mainstream' drivers may not be handled with the care that they should be.
I like the breakdown of games/apps that support the LargeAddressAware flag, maybe this list can grow for future articles covering more apps/games. I also enjoyed your testing on the "potential" penalty of less kernel space, something I never took the time to do on my own.
Imagine my suprise today when making my rounds to my favorite hardware site. ;) Reply
nullpointerus - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link64bit versions of Windows(i.e. XP and Vista) do not suffer from the traditional 2GB barrier, as all the kernel mode addressing is usually moved to well above the confines of the limited 32bit addressing area. As such, these versions of Windows don't need to have their space allocations adjusted for an application to gain access to more addressing space, bypassing the instability and any possible performance problems that occurs as a result of making this adjustment.
I used 64-bit Vista for a while but just couldn't deal with the BSOD's and other wierd behavior that would happen with 4 GB RAM installed and the BIOS memory hole option set. For example, the nVidia SATA drivers (3 updates on Windows Update alone) for my board would BSOD on every boot when the BIOS memory hole option was enabled, and the PVR-150's driver would randomly corrupt itself and turn into a green/garbled slideshow:
I wish the 64-bit driver developers would get off their butts and fix this stuff. Reply
gersson - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkLarge Address Aware Status
it says, "STALKER: Oblivion Lost" Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkI'm not sure I see what the problem is. Could you go in to more detail? Reply
gersson - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkYou meant to place 'Stalker' cos there is already an entry for oblivion and 'lost' (I assume you mean 'lost planet')
Read like this:
Observe first line:
STALKER: Oblivion Lost Yes
Lost Planet No
Company of Heroes Yes
Supreme Commander No
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Yes
Battlefield 2142 No
Call of Juarez DX10 BM No
World of Warcraft No
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion No
Photoshop CS3 Yes
Dreamweaver CS3 No
DigitalFreak - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkNo. Stalker had the working title of Stalker: Oblivion Lost... Reply
gersson - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkhmm ok, didn't know that -- but you can see how I had arrived @ my conclusion :-P Reply
The Boston Dangler - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkthe game was released as STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. no biggie Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkFixed. I keep forgetting they changed the name. Reply
grant2 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkSo this game will crash reproducably when using a large map, with many players, and many units.
And GPG released it like this? Either their QA department is rather incompetent, or management were buffoons to ignore such an obvious error.
Very disapointing! Reply
EODetroit - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkI've been hoping Anandtech would take memory issues more seriously for a while now, glad you're getting your teeth into it for real now!
"Unfortunately Windows Vista reverted to a non-accelerated desktop at this point, preventing us from capturing a screenshot of the exact memory readouts or the error message."
Use a camera!
BabyBear - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link
This also happens with Flight Simulator X by the way.
Over on Phil Taylor's blog he makes mention of it awhile back
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/06/15/f...">Microsoft's Phil Taylors Blog
There was also some talk that the June 07 DirectX Redist. seemed to 'help' with Out of Memory problems when using the /3gb switch. Reply
joetron2030 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkOn "Page 4: A Case Study: Supreme Commander", in the paragraph discussing the first screen shot from Sysinternals' Process Explorer, you refer to the "Virtual Size" column as the "Private Size" column (which doesn't exist in the screen shot).
Had me briefly confused. Reply
quanta - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkAlthough Windows 2000/2003/Vista server versions aren't exactly designed for gaming, did anyone tested game titles on these server OS to see if these large address aware titles will use the Physical Address Extension feature? Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkThe short answer is no.
The longer answer is that due to a combination of chipset support, software support, performance, and driver support, it's not really usable outside of a server environment and shouldn't be used on a consumer system. Reply
brink - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkWouldn't matter, WinXP SP2 uses PAE, why would you want to install it on a server OS? Only 2003 is a server OS of the ones you mentioned, and I think only Windows 2003 Enterprise is the only 32-bit OS that has the ability to use more than 4GB of memory (8GB seems to be the limit for what modules/mobos are available right now) Reply
TA152H - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkI'm just reading the remarks about the 386 pushing the memory from 1 MB, to 4 GB. It's patently untrue, unless you think the 386 succeeded the 8086, and not the 286. The 286 had 24 bit addressing (in 64K segments) for 16 MB of memory. This is not only what OS/2 used, but extended memory as well. So, it's not academic. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkJust hearing the words "segmented memory" gives me flashbacks - and they're not the good kind. For this article we're talking strictly about flat addressing since I could write a small book on just segmented addressing, but I've updated the article to make this clear. Reply
TA152H - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkEither way, you're using the wrong values. Even on the 8086 the memory was segmented. Actually, so was the 386, but it could handle segments up to 4 GB, so it wasn't important. So, using 1 MB and saying you're not referring to segmentation is inaccurate; that is segmented memory.
Segmentation was not a bad thing, particularly back then. It saved memory space, and back in 1978 that was a big thing. Addresses were given in 16 bits, you didn't have to specify the rest, and the net result was you had shorter code. You would have to change the registers to point to the next segment from time to time, but overall it saved a lot of memory. You also could protect apps from each other, but that wasn't really used.
I was an OS/2 developer, and it was a pain sometimes for sure. By the time the 286 came out, which I think was the best processor Intel ever made considering the timing, and the incredible capabilities it had over it's predecessor (the 8086, not the 80186 which was made in parallel with the 286), the extra memory saving was not worth the nuisance of having to deal with, at most, 64K segments. But it really wasn't possible for Intel to do it any other way, as I'll explain below.
Motorola even added some external memory management unit that added segmentation, which today seems strange. It's widely viewed now as just a bad thing, but back then, it wasn't. Motorola really had a choice though, since the 68K was part 32-bit, and part 16-bit, and part 24-bit (addressing). Although the 286 was a more powerful processor than the 68000, it was pure 16-bit, except for the oddity of the 24-bit addressing. Consequently, allowing flat 24-bit addressing would not have been feasible. So, they dealt with it by just adding more segments. Considering the absolutely incredible improvement in this processor in just about every way, it was not such a bad tradeoff.
BitJunkie - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkHiya Bill. Reply
jay401 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkJust FYI, SupCom has already exhibited this problem and crashes once it breaks the 2GB barrier, which can happen easily in longer games with a high unit limit.
This is mostly due to the poor efficiency in their code and models, something GPG (the developer, Gas Powered Games) reported could not easily be fixed in a patch because they basically have to re-render every unit in the game so they take up less memory. Due to this, it's likely to remain unfixed until the expansion pack (now a standalone game) Forged Alliance comes out in November, if it is fixed at all
One forum member developed a way to increase the addressable memory to around 3GB on 32bit WinXP and Vista, so if you're running 4GB, this provides a sort of band-aid solution in the meantime. Reply
brink - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkit's a 2 prong solution for WinXP, you have to set a /3GB flag in your BOOT.INI file for the instance of windows you're booting. Additionally since Supcom doesn't have the LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag, you have to patch the EXE using the tool mentioned in the article ((someone created a batch that uses the tool to patch the supcom exe, easily found in the official supcom forums)
I mention this since the article doesn't really say how they did it (and they used Vista, which is another boc to contend with) Since HardOCP did a comparison a while back between supcom perf in XP and Vista, I've really only installed/used supcom in XP still. With our fix for a 4GB machine (the machine I regularly use still has 2GB, I just stay away from 81KM maps) XP has still remained stable, but we did have one crash in a 40KM map game on Gentleman's Reef.
I don't like the article's preference on FPS in Supcom, mainly because I don't look at Supcom as a FPS centric game at all. If you've played, you know when a slow computer enters the game (or you have 7 computers each with 1,000 units on a 81KM map) the in-game timer will start to crawl. 1 second of game time will take 2 seconds, or much much worse. It would have been approx 100x cooler if the bench was "it took this much before the timer started to skew".
jay401 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linklol funny, now that I am paging through the article I see you mention this very issue. Good! Reply
jay401 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkWell you didn't address the 'WHY' - why the game uses so much memory. Hopefully I provided a little light on that subject.
Also on Page 5 none of your graphs are labeled as to what they are measuring. Please note if they're measuring fps, which is my gut but I'm not sure because they are unlabeled.
Thanks. Reply
MadBoris - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link
Well you didn't address the 'WHY' - why the game uses so much memory. Hopefully I provided a little light on that subject.
Although you are right in part, the lead engineer did mention the units are one reason for large memory consumption. (BTW, I had heard that they are all being/were rerendered for November). There is another issue beyond that though that becomes obvious. The initial virtual address space at the beginning of a game between a 20k map and 81k map is only about 150MB difference. But as unit count climbs, the larger map gap grows somewhat exponentially compared to the smaller. So something else is askew.
As Ryan mentioned the whys and wherefores aren't really the point, this issue is a global one and 2GB is a real hard limit now for games since we have the horsepower(CPU & GPU) for larger memory consuming texture maps, larger resolutions, yet the 2GB memory limit for a game is a definitive roadblock to forward progress so I am glad the issue is coming to the forefront.
As much confusion and fear there is on this /3GB subject for the laymen, this is still a great rabbit in the hat for us with 32 bit OS's if more driver writers get on the ball, fears can subside. Hopefully devs like Crytek can continue to push demand for 64 bit with a nice 64 bit Crysis patch too, and we can start making the transition leaving 32 bit behind as drivers/apps also make the transition.
I think articles like these help the cause. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkTo be honest, we didn't address why because it really isn't relevant. Even if Supreme Commander was done perfectly in every way, the result would have been the same once it reached the 2GB barrier. Reply
gigahertz20 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkThey should have made Vista only 64 bit to put pressure on the transition. Reply
johnsonx - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkThe problem with going 64-bit only this time around is that there are too many 32-bit programs around that simply won't run on 64-bit windows. I have several myself that I depend on daily. They are slightly older programs that the developer doesn't intend to upgrade to be 64-bit, but that doesn't change the fact that I need them. If these apps didn't work with Vista because it was released in 64-bit only form, then I wouldn't be running Vista. Millions of others are (or would be) in this same situation, which would significantly harm Vista sales.
If the next version of Windows were made 64-bit only, around the 2010 time frame, I think that would be quite reasonable. By then most 32-bit only programs will have been replaced or rendered obsolete.
I think Microsoft has handled the 32/64-bit issue correctly so far, for the most part. XP64 should have been ready sooner and should have been better supported though.
Related question for anyone who knows: I know retail Vistas include 32-bit and 64-bit on the same disc, and the user is free to install either. I also know that OEM Vistas include only the one version on the disc. What about the OEM keycodes though? Can you install a 64-bit Vista using the keycode that came with a 32-bit disc? Or has MS limited the keycode as well? Reply
StygianAgenda - Thursday, June 05, 2008 - linkTo answer your question about the Windows Vista Retail package, I have 2 copies of Vista Ultimate retail, and it was packed with 2 DVDs, 1 is 32bit, the other is the 64bit build.
The set comes with a single key, and the key is bound to the 64bit version, so if you opt to use the 32bit version instead, you'll most likely have to call into Microsoft's activation center and manually activate your copy. I've had to do this 4 times now, due to hardware changes, because Vista detects system changes, so if you remove 1 or 2 boards and boot into Vista, the system will automatically de-activate. Now, granted, the call to MS was fairly painless, but it's annoying all the same.
Out of the 4 Vista systems I own currently (3 of which are laptops), I've had great success with the OS, itself. Unfortunately for me, the motherboard I've been using on my custom built workstation is flaky... I've done my research though (tonight), and might have a fix in the works, if it works, that is. Otherwise, I'll be ordering a new motherboard, and calling Microsoft yet again to transfer my license to the new configuration. By the way, they always ask "Is this copy running on more than one PC?". In light of all the hoopla over the licensing scheme in Vista, I would hope that no one is stupid enough to try to use a Vista Retail license on multiple PCs, because it'll cause all of them to be blacklisted. Oh, and the new Vista Enterprise edition is only available in lots of 25 licenses or higher, and requires a licensing server on the LAN with the deployed workstation licenses. It's either that, or expect to have a couple of extra hundred MB or so of net traffic from all of the Vista Ent. workstations checking in with MS everytime the systems are booted. Makes me glad that I also work with Linux very heavily, and all things considered, if Linux + WINE can run all of my criticle Win32 apps, then this will be the last Vista Licenses that I buy. I'll still keep Vista on my laptops, and I'll continue to run my XP workstations, and 2K3 servers, but MS is going to have to really do some impressive work to get me convinced to migrate to their next platform... such as maybe... a *real* 3D desktop... which is already available, stable and totally badass on Linux (check out Kubuntu + compiz).
(btw: Sorry if I seem like I'm on a rant here... no offense intended toward the readers, at all... it's just that when you work with OS's at the level that I do, after a while stupid mistakes made by OS vendors start to get beyond aggrivating.) Reply
instant - Saturday, July 21, 2007 - linkAnd when we are talking about GAMES, how if at all is this relevant to the current discussion?
x64 has been the way to go ever since it was released.
miahallen - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - linkThat is incorrect, Vista x64 will run x86 apps without problem (so will XP x64), that's the nice thing about it. I ran x64 for quite a while, and ran almost nothing but x86 apps on it.
The keycodes for x86 do not chnge for x64 installs...they use the same key. And the retail versions I bought did not have both versions on one disc, I had to order a x64 disc online (and pay $10 for S&H). Reply
johnsonx - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - linkWe are both right. While many 32-bit apps run fine on 64-bit windows, some don't. In particular, any app that employs any sort of driver (I'm talking software drivers, not hardware drivers) must at least have the driver compiled in 64-bit mode. In my case the example is a file synchronizing application that installs a driver to monitor file system changes. There are many apps that wouldn't appear to need a driver, but in fact they do. If you want to see the software drivers on your system, go into Device Manager and select Tools->Show Hidden Devices. Now look in "Non-Plug and Play Drivers". Everything in there is a software driver. If you're running 64-bit Windows, everything in there MUST be 64-bit. Applications can also install drivers at runtime, which also must be 64-bit.
There are other 32-bit apps that for whatever reason just won't work on 64-bit windows. I believe AutoCAD 2006 and earlier have this problem. Likewise, any apparently 32-bit app that still has some 16-bit legacy code won't run either (for example some rather old but still perfectly useful 32-bit apps use a 16-bit version of InstallShield; the app itself might run, but there's no way to get it installed.).
Regarding the Retail version, I've never had a retail version of Vista in my hand. I recall Microsoft saying at one point that both versions would be on the same disc and had never heard anything contrary.
Christopher1 - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - linkSo this 64-bit software driver problem doesn't apply to things like games, I would assume, considering that they usually do not install software drivers?
Well then, I think I'm going to contact Toshiba and use their 'Upgrade to x64 version of your operating system' option that recently appeared, if this doesn't effect games. Reply
miahallen - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - linkNo, all games should run fine on x64...however, tests have shown that most games run slightly faster on Vista x86. Reply
miahallen - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - linkOK you are right, I stand corrected. I knew about this, just wasn't thinking about it. But from my experiance, those particular apps (that use SW drivers) seem to be the ones getting the quickest attention. I do recall having a couple issues related....a freeware plugin for MCE called mymovies. x64 is not supported at all. Also, Daemon Tools & PowerISO were having issues...but I believe they have both been resolved since then (I went to x86 about four months ago, not much point for me to go back until my next upgrade - 8GB RAM). Reply
strikeback03 - Friday, July 13, 2007 - linkSomehow I'm doubting that the "average computer user" who buys a prebuilt system without knowing or caring about OS design will stand for random peripherals not working due to a 64bit OS. Probably part of why finding 64bit versions of Vista on prebuilt systems is hard. What should happen is Microsoft state right now that the next version of Windows will be 64bit only; then try and educate consumers that some things won't be compatible, and notify companies that they really need to have their 64bit drivers working by then. Reply
jay401 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkNo, they should have rendered their units properly (if that's even the real reason... somewhere though they aren't doing something right in their coding, given the way SupCom eats memory). Reply
jpeyton - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkOn page 5, under Software Test Bed, the RAM should read (4x512MB) instead of (4x512GB). Reply
fic2 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - linkFirst sentence on the front page summary:
"As applications being to approach"
I assume that "being" is supposed to be begin. Reply


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Qais Akbar Omar (GRS'16), a graduate student in the Creative Writing Program, has published a much-praised memoir, A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story. He recalls how the violence and tumult of civil war jolted his family, who, despite losing relatives, their home, and possessions, continued to nurture his wish to attend a university.
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Chester Cheetah got a burglary suspect busted in South Carolina.
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Mobile GPU Faceoff: AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics vs. NVIDIA Optimus Technologyby Jarred Walton on 9/20/2011 6:40 AM EST
91 Comments
Back to Article
tipoo - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link"The bigger issue of course is that AMD needs to get their laptop partners—Sony in this case—to release regular driver updates, and to use up-to-date driver builds when laptops launch."
AMD now lets you get laptop drivers from their own site, and they are always as up to date as the desktop ones. Unless Sony opted out of that for whatever reason? Reply
OCedHrt - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThese drivers do not work for switchable graphics. nVidia had the same issue before Optimus. Reply
orangpelupa - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkthe driver is work for switchable graphic.
my acer laptop with switchable intel + HD Mobility 5650 is updateable.
use the 11-8_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe
not the a few KB .exe auto detector from ATi. This app is useless.
but if failed to install using the main almost 100MB .exe, usually it stil can be isntalled using modded .inf.
just make sure to Switch to dGPU mode before running any installation driver. Reply
orangpelupa - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkmodded inf and the download link for mobility 11.8 generic ATi
http://wp.me/pyhfN-m1 Reply
The0ne - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkI wouldn't say useless as the full package download refuses to installed properly on my M17xR2 and the only way for the driver to work is for me to use their auto detector and downloader. This for some reason downloads a slightly different package (size is less I believe) but it works. Reply
mfenn - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkDid you even read the article? Jarred mentioned that they did on several occasions. Hell, he even devoted an entire page to the issue! Reply
mczak - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI'm wondering if you can still "make your own driver". This is exactly what I did for a Thinkpad T400 with switchable graphics, since the provided driver was so old and buggy. The "monolithic" driver isn't really all that monolithic, it basically consists of a standard AMD mobility driver (which you just can download if you have the real download link) plus a standard intel driver in the same package. Though the .inf file needs to be hacked up.
(So I used an old switchable driver to see what the .inf looked like, plus a new intel and amd mobility driver to make up the new version - worked quite ok except some driver signing warnings, and some bogus mux-switching upon suspend/resume with multimon though I don't think this worked before neither.)
I'd venture a guess and suspect this would still work with the muxless solutions, but it's a huge pain in the ass obviously and AMD really needs to fix this and just have drivers which work on all mobile gpus, the OEMs will NEVER get it right otherwise, they won't care if AMD gives them new drivers monthly or not they will simply not bother to supply updated drivers. Reply
bjacobson - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkeven if they up to date, that's no guarantee that they're going to work for the first 6 or so months. I've never had much luck getting everything on AMD to work the first time-- crossfire with dual monitors doesn't work on 2x 5770 with Quake Wars : Enemy Territory (had to disable the 2nd display); alt-tab still doesn't work in Unreal Tournament 3 without crashing the game (not in crossfire, just 1x4890); and it took them several months after switching their user interface to that new one to package back in the under/overscan ability on the embedded graphics that came on the motherboard we used for our HTPC...just lots of stuff that's always 95% complete with 5% broken that ends up being really annoying.
IE, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in between suspend, hibernate, plugging in an external monitor, and this dynamic GPU solution, that something won't work quite right for about 6 months...but that's just my gut speaking judging by what I've seen before. I'm a big fan of underdogs and still cheer for AMD, but I do have to say Nvidia's drivers (since about 8800GT which is as early as my experience goes) have simply worked with all those quirky setups we needed and didn't end up breaking later when installing an updated driver. Reply
OCedHrt - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkI've always had to overscan/underscan available as an option for integrated graphics for the last 2 years+. Yet I've always had problems with nVidia, especially on stability. I don't think the stability is always tied directly to the gpu and drivers. Reply
Aloonatic - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkIs that just for more recent mobility radeon systems?
Just the other day, I was looking to update a laptop with a 4570, but it wouldn't update anything other than the good old CCC.
(I was a Dell Studio 17, by the way :o) ) Reply
Wolfpup - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkThe article mentions, but probably doesn't make the statement strong enough-you CAN'T use AMD's drivers with Sandy Bridge + AMD systems, which is why I don't even think they should be on the market, let alone anyone actually buy them.
I'd been looking at HP's Sandy Bridge systems until learning that. AMD + AMD systems SHOULD work, although the A series stuff isn't listed yet. But the c series chips work, so I'd be surprised if they don't get A series officially supported.
Unfortunately there's unsupported stuff using Nvidia too...apparently Sager's systems aren't supported (along with some Sony's, and I've heard the new high end Dell ones with Floptimus have issues too...)
Unfortunately it's hard to find out which notebooks can use normal drivers, even though that's a HUGE selling point! Reply
inplainview - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkMy 2011 MPB 15 inch supports:
AMD Radeon HD 6750M:
Chipset Model: AMD Radeon HD 6750M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x6741
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-C0170L-573
gMux Version: 1.9.23
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.573
Color LCD:
Resolution: 1440 x 900
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes
Intel HD Graphics 3000:
Chipset Model: Intel HD Graphics 3000
Type: GPU
Bus: Built-In
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
Device ID: 0x0126
Revision ID: 0x0009
gMux Version: 1.9.23 Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkWe all care deeply. Reply
retrospooty - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link"My 2011 MPB 15 inch supports:"
Pretty much all laptops these days support both... The question is does it properly switch between the two, using the low power internal intel for normal Windows day to day use and then automatically switch to the Radeon when 3d gaming.... Wait, its a MAc, why would you even bother 3d gaming.
This maked me ask, why does Apple even bother putting an expensive gaming card in a Mac? The few games that run, run like crap... unless its there for the Windows/boot camp portion. I guess that makes sense. But then, why not get a PC, its cheaper. Reply
inighthawki - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkAs someone who doesn't even like Macs, I think you are looking way past the obvious. Many Macs are used for things like Photoshop, which can use hardware accelerated rendering, and Maya, 3DS Max, etc which are pretty demanding 3D modeling and CAD programs. Not all higher end GPUs are JUST for gaming. Reply
retrospooty - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link???
That kinda proves my point. Its not for games, it IS good for those things you listed, which are much better suited to pro series video cards (Nvidia Quadro and AMD Fire Pro) It doesnt make sense to put gaming cards. Reply
inplainview - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkWell, I'm not 11 so I actually use my Mac for real work, and don't waste SSD space putting games on it.. Also as a semi-pro photographer I tend to use it to the max. Did I explain it enough for you? Reply
sigmatau - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkYou forgot the price tag. How much money does it take to support Apple? Reply
inplainview - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI make A LOT of money so I buy whatever I want. Reply
seapeople - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThen why don't you buy a bigger SSD so your games don't load slowly? Reply
just4U - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkIt's been a looong day.. I need a good chuckle.. thanks! Reply
inplainview - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkAre you serial stupid? I said above that I do not play games. Are you reading challenged? Reply
ggathagan - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkThanks,
I was wondering what you ended up buying.
What're you having for dinner tonight?
Mom was worried, too. You might want to call her. Reply
sonofsanta - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI, er, I think the phrase you're looking for is "cry foul", not "fowl". Wouldn't make much sense if people started running round shouting "Pheasant!" because nVidia sent you both laptops... Reply
MysteriousAndy - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link++
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british... Reply
swx2 - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkrelevant:
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=119 Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkIt's simply a typo (or misspelling if you prefer); I'm fully aware that we "cry foul" and not "fowl". Reply
beginner99 - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link... makes absolutely no sense.
"we thought it would be interesting to see just how much performance you give up by gaming with the slower Llano CPU. Ready for some fun? You actually gain 5% performance with the A8-3500M + 6630M compared to the VAIO CA. ...Can you feel my frustration (with Sony) yet?"
The Charts show the i5 being better in every single benchmark especially starcraft 2, 29 vs 62 fps and you claim i5 has a 9% lead? Sorry but in my math its over 100% faster.
Again that last paragraph makes 0 sense and contradicts the data. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkCrap... I had the wrong numbers in my spreadsheet. Will update the text, because I was totally flabbergasted by the percentages. Turns out I had numbers from a different laptop listed (but the charts are correct). Thanks for pointing this out! Reply
Althernai - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
Meanwhile, the 6700M, 6800M, and 6900M could all benefit from dynamic switching (assuming the bugs and other issues are worked out), but no one is doing it.
Actually, HP's dv6t and dv7t have the 6770M with switchable graphics. It was badly broken upon release (dynamic only = OpenGL only on Intel), but HP has since released a BIOS update which allows you to select between Dynamic and Fixed in the BIOS (not in Windows like the Sony, but at least it's possible now).
How have laptops with AMD switchable graphics fared in terms of driver updates over time?
Updating drivers on the HP dv6t is not so bad: you need to install AMD's drivers on top of what HP provides, but it seems to work OK as long as you leave out the control center. AMD releases two sets of drivers: the normal type which comes with all kinds of restrictions and the "hotfix" type which can be installed on practically anything (including even FirePro GPUs). You can always get the latter for the current month if there is a problem with downloading the driver.
Does AMD's switchable technology work any better under Linux that NVIDIA's Optimus?[/quoteReply
Linux support is terrible: unlike Optimus where it usually at least has the decency to use the Intel GPU with the Nvidia one turned off, with dv6t, the discreet GPU is running (I can tell by the thermal behavior), but no drivers for it can be installed and there appears to be no way to use it. It's partially my own fault for using Scientific Linux (it's the latest 6.1 release, but the kernel is still rather old). I will try with Fedora 16 once it comes out, but my only goal is to get the Radeon card to turn off and be able to control the brightness -- actually switching between GPUs is highly unlikely.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThanks for the input -- I've corrected the 6700M mistakes now. Somehow I got it stuck in my brain that 6700M was rebadged 5700M, but that's only the 6300M and 6800M. Thanks also for the updates on Linux--good to know how it does/doesn't work. Reply
rflynn88 - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkCorrection required:
The 6700M series chips do support dynamic switching. I'm not sure if the 6300M series does. The HP dv6t can be optioned out with a Core i5/i7 Sandy Bridge chip and the 6770M with dynamic switching. There was actually a big issue with the dynamic switching not working on the dv6t for OpenGL applications, which was only recently remedied with a BIOS update. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkCorrected -- see above note. I mistakenly confused the 6700M situation with the 6300M/6800M, which are rebadged 5000M parts and would not have the decoupled PCI-E interface to allow for dynamic switching. Reply
BernardP - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkWhat I would like to do with Optimus is disable it completely and have my notebook always use the Nvidia graphics, even on the desktop. I don't care about battery life, as my notebook is almost never running on battery.
After searching on the web, I have found no way to disable Optimus. Anybody here have a solution? Reply
bhima - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkYes. Open up your NVIDIA settings. Change your Global Settings preffered graphics processor to the NVIDIA card. Voila! Reply
BernardP - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkAs simple as that? I'm hopeful...
Please allow me a bit of residual doubt, considering, for example, the following discussion where there is a mention of this suggested setting.
However, I'll try your suggestion on a new Alienware laptop with Optimus one of my friends just bought. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThe above change won't disable Optimus so much as always try to run programs on the dGPU. To my knowledge, there is no way to disable it completely, since with Optimus there is no direct link between the dGPU and the display outputs. All data has to get copied over the PCI-E bus to the IGP framebuffer. Reply
BernardP - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkThat's also my understanding, hence my doubts... Reply
seapeople - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI can see not caring about battery life, but you don't care about heat and/or noise either? More power use = more heat = constant fan turning on and off vs silent operation using only the integrated GPU.
Less heat also equates to longer hardware lifetime.
I just don't understand why you would want a fat GPU idling while you browse AnandTech instead of the low power Intel GPU built into your computer? Reply
BernardP - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkBecause I want a not-so-fat NVidia GPU, such as GT520M or GT525M, to pair with a high quality 1980x1080 IPS screen.... and then, use NVidia scaling to set up a custom resolution that will allow my old presbyobic eyes to see what's on the screen. For a 15.6 in. screen, 1440x900 is about right and with the NVidia custom resolution tools, there is no significant loss of quality.
AMD graphics drivers don't allow setting up custom resolutions. Can Intel graphics drivers do it?
And I know that one can make things bigger onscreen with Windows settings, but it doesn't work all the time for everything. There is no substitute for setting up custom resolutions. Reply
Filiprino - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkHuh... Sony sucks big on graphics driver section. Better forget their radeon card and OpenCL support? Reply
86waterpumper - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThe amd LLano solution is totally worthless as far as I'm concerned until they release some laptops with smaller sizes. If I am going to buy a honking monster laptop I'm not going to power it with a cripple and slow llano, I'm going to just get a i5 or i7. When they get some 12 and 13.3 stuff to market I'll get interested... Reply
duploxxx - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThat is up to OEM to design, there are lots of people these days who want large screen and low price, they seem to target Liano for that, I also want a 13-14"based Liano but can't seem to find it....
Liano slow, yeah right for common tasks it is more then powerfull enough, as if one would care if a laptop boots 2 sec faster and firefox starts 0,5sec faster. The crapload of SW that OEM deploy on those machines already makes it horrible even on an i7 so called supper fast CPU....for the ultimate benchmark experience :D
storage these days is the slow factor in a laptop, unless off course you work with an Atom... Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkFiliprino, I don't know about all programs, but it is definitely possible to use OpenCL with the VAIO CA. You just have to switch to manual mode to get it to work, and you'll be running 11.1 drivers. I did get the Bitcoin GUIminer to work with the Sony as a test, for example, but it totally failed to detect the GPU when in dynamic mode. (Note: 68Mhash/sec isn't fast enough to be worthwhile of course, and given the pricing on BTC these days I wouldn't bother trying to get involved with the scheme. It's still a useful benchmark at times, though.) Reply
Filiprino - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkThank you, although I'm more worried about the driver upgrading viability and the performance improvements they can bring :-/ Reply
BryanC - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkDid I miss the battery life comparison? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI'm going to post that in the full review; this was intended to focus solely on switching technology, as it was already plenty long. In case you're wondering though, here are the numbers. Acer has a 66Wh battery and Sony has a 59Wh battery.
Acer 3830TG Optimus:
Idle: 580 minutes
Internet: 461 minutes
H.264: 344 minutes
Acer 3830TG GT 540M:
H.264: 248 minutes
Sony VAIO C IGP:
Idle: 574 minutes
Internet: 417 minutes
H.264: 358 minutes
Sony VAIO C 6630M:
Idle: 415 minutes
Internet: 336 minutes
H.264: 276 minutes Reply
fabarati - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI'm pretty sure the AMD HD 6700-series are just the HD6600-series with higher clocks or GDDR5. They're all Turks-based.
It's the HD 6500-series that are rebranded HD 5600/5700s (Redwood). Something that's also pretty obvious if you look at the core configurations. Reply
chinedooo - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkYea they are all the same 480 stream porcessor chips. But the 6770 has got higher clocks and gddr5. The GDDR5 makes a world of difference. Reply
duploxxx - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI have a latitude e6520 i7 with NV Quadro
The GPU switch works well as long as the NV configuration has the right profile for the right game, if the profile isn't available you sometimes face issues. (just black screen, why at that point it doesn't run on the Intel GPU I don't know.....)
THe only way to avoid this is to add the exe to the profile, or to right click the application and select the GPU to run with. Works fine but i would expect this to be the same with ATI no? Reply
powchie - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkNo battery life comparison? Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThis is just a GPU switching comparison, not a pair of full laptop reviews. Reply
khimera2000 - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkIts an Intel GPU switching comparison. They didnt compare AMD switching with AMD CPU. I think thats an important detail.
This articles scope is alot more narrow then the title implies. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThis article is over 8000 words and I thought that was long enough. Battery life numbers are posted above if you're interested. Really, the battery life comparison is more of a look at how well Acer and Sony are optimizing their BIOS and drivers for mobile use, and both do quite well (though Sony leads in terms of efficiency, even with a larger LCD). Reply
Stuka87 - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI have not yet used AMD's switchable setup. Being that its so new, I am not surprised that it is not yet perfect. nVidia took a while to work out their kinks as well.
Although with that said, I still have an issue with my Precision (Optimus with i7-2620M and Quadro 1000). I use a Matrox Triple Head to go to drive three displays with a Dell Docking Station. This being when I am undocked running off battery, it runs on the Intel graphics. When I dock, I tries to switch to the Quadro. However, I end up with a black screen because its trying to use the resolution of the built in screen that Intel was driving before docking. The work around is to always hibernate before docking, this makes it re-initialize the hardware when it comes out of hibernation.
But typically, the switch works fine. And I get amazing battery life out of this machine. Reply
medi01 - Sunday, September 25, 2011 - link"I have not yet used AMD's switchable setup. Being that its so new, I am not surprised that it is not yet perfect"
Especially on nVidia supplied notebook. ;) Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - linkWhich you can buy from Sony. It was unopened, with absolutely no tampering by anyone other than myself -- and the same goes for the Acer. If anyone can point me to a better AMD + Intel laptop with dynamic switchable graphics (Vostro 3450 with HD 6470M? I don't think so...), let me know. I've also talked several times with AMD and asked them to provide me with new drivers and/or a different laptop. We'll see if they can do so, because honestly I'd love for AMD to have a more compelling offering in this area. Reply
mercblue281 - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkCan you guys please have someone proofread before posting?
"...and they haven't been able to get use one yet..."
In the FIRST paragraph? Really?
Come on! I know the internet has dumbed down the general population's grammar and spelling but you guys are better than this. Reply
jeremyshaw - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkon the first page, you mention "HD6700m line is rebadged HD5600m part"
which isn't true, since the HD6700m line has 480 shaders, and GDDR5, both of which are lacking from the HD5600m. Reply
overseer - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link"If an OEM were willing to commit the resources necessary to at least do bi-monthly driver updates for switchable graphics, that would also be sufficient, but they'd need a proven track record of doing so—something no laptop manufacturer has ever achieved."
Can't say I agree with you here.
I have an Acer Aspire 4745G (i3 330M + HD5650M, manually switchable) that I bought in Apr. 2010. Over a year and half Acer has been offering the GPU driver updates for it (once in a quarter or 2 months AFAICR).
Check the 4745G downloads on Acer's support page and you'll find the latest AMD VGA driver update which came out on 2011/09/07.
http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkI can't see any other drivers for that laptop other than the original Sept. 2010 driver and a new Sept. 2011 driver. Got a link for the other previous drivers to confirm? Anyway, AMD says they make a driver build available for switchable graphics on a monthly basis, so it sounds like Acer is actually using that. Kudos to them if that's the case. Reply
overseer - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkPerhaps Acer just omitted older versions of drivers they deemed unnecessary. My 4745G was manufactured in Jan. 2010 and the initial CCC was dated late 2009. I can recall I took 2 updates: one in summer 2010 (Catalyst 10.3?) and one in last week (the latest one). So it's safe to say there have been at least 4 traceable versions of AMD GPU drivers for my model.
While I can't really convince you that it's a bi-monthly or quarterly update cycle from Acer with the limited evidence, this OEM nonetheless has been keeping an eye on new graphics drivers - something I'd never expected in the first place as an early adopter of AMD switchable. Reply
MJEvans - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkYou toyed with several ideas for power throttling graphics chips. The obvious ones like turning off cores and working at a different point of the voltage/frequency curve to slash used power are solid.
Where things turn silly is suggesting the use of only 64 of 256 bits of memory interface. This simply won't work for a few reasons. However let's assume that for price and performance 4, 64 bit, chips had been selected. Probably, the application assets would be littered across the 4 slabs of memory; either for wider page accesses to the same content (faster transfer) or for parallel access to unrelated content (say for two isolated tasks). In any event the cost of consolidating them; both in time and energy expended for the moves, would only be worthwhile if it were for a long duration.
Instead a better approach would be to follow a similar voltage/freq curve for medium power modes. For low power modes the obvious solution is to have core assets on one bank of memory and use any other enabled blanks as disposable framebuffers. This would allow you to operate at lower clock speeds without impacting performance. Further, if the display output were disabled you would then be able to de-activate all but the asset bank of memory.
Probably a patent thicket of somekind exists for this stuff; but really I consider these to be things that must be obvious to someone skilled in the art, or even just of logic and basic knowledge of the physics driving current transistors; since my college degree is getting stale and I've never been employed in this field. Reply
Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThis might not be feasible, but perhaps AMD and/or Nvidia could do something like what Nvidia is doing with Kal-El: have low-power circuitry that can do the bare minimum of what's needed for Windows Aero, etc. (basically what the integrated graphics chip does in Optimus) and switch it out for the more powerful circuitry when needed. As with Kal-El, this switch could be more or less invisible to Windows, or it could be handled at the driver level.
Of course, that basically wastes the cost of the unused integrated graphics. Perhaps AMD's APUs could more take advantage of this idea: basically, put a CPU and two GPUs on one die, flipping between the slow, power-sipping graphics and the fast and powerful graphics. Reply
MJEvans - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkActually the Kal-El article explained the key point rather well. The two common options are high speed but a high cost of being 'on' and lower speed but more efficiency per operation at the same speed. Given the highly parallel nature of a graphics solution it makes much more sense to keep the parts that are operating running at faster speed and switch off more of the ones that then aren't needed at all. The main barrier to doing that effectively enough would be the blocks of units used; however if development is occurring with this in mind it might be economically viable. That's a question that would require actual industry experience and knowledge of current design trade-offs to answer. Reply
Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkWell, the thing that I got from the Kal-El article that was really interesting to me, which I think COULD be relevant to mobile GPU applications, is that, apparently, using this other form of transistor--which is low-leakage but cannot run faster than a certain speed (half a GHz or so)--is sufficiently more efficient in terms of power usage that Nvidia engineers felt that the additional cost is worth it, both in terms of silicon area and the increased cost per part of manufacturing, which, of course, trickles down to the price of the tablet or whatever it's used in. That sounds to me like they feel pretty confident about the idea.
That being said, I have not the slightest clue what kind of transistors are used in current mobile chips. It might be that GPU manufacturers are already reaping the benefits of low-leakage transistors, in which case there might not be anywhere to go. If they are not, however, why not have just enough low-power cores to run Windows 8's flashy graphical effects, and then switch over to the more powerful, higher-clocked circuitry for gaming or GPGPU applications. I don't know how much it would cost to the consumer, but I'm betting someone would pay $25-$50 more for something that "just works." Reply
MJEvans - Friday, September 23, 2011 - linkIt seems that either your comment missed my primary point or I didn't state it clearly enough.
Likely the engineering trade-off favors powering just a single graphics core (out of the hundreds even mainstream systems how have, relative to merely 4 (vastly more complex) CPU cores on 'mid-high' end systems) rather than increasing hardware and software complexity by adding in an entirely different manufacturing technology and tying up valuable area that could be used for other things with a custom low power version of a thing.
I find it much more likely that normal use states favor these scenarios:
a) Display is off,
a.a) entire gpu is off (Ram might be trickle refreshing).
b) Display is frozen,
b.a) entire gpu is off (Ram might be trickle refreshing).
c) Display is on,
c.a) gpu has one core active at medium or higher speed
(This would not be /as/ efficient as an ultra-low power core or two, but I seriously have to wonder if they would even be sufficient; or what fraction of a single core is required for 'basic' features these days).
c.b) mid-power; some cores are active, possibly dynamically scaled based on load (similar to CPU frequency governing but a bit more basic here)
c.c) full power; everything is on and cycles are not even wasted on profiling (this would be a special state requested by intensive games/applications). Reply
danjw - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkWhen I worked for a small game developer, getting ATI to give you the time of day was pretty much impossible. Where as Nvidia was more then happy to help us out, with some free graphics cards and support. If AMD is continuing on this path, they will not ever be real competition to Nvidia. Reply
fynamo - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThe WHOLE POINT of having switchable graphics is to reduce power consumption and thereby extend battery life, and at the same time provide any necessary 2D acceleration capabilities for the OS and Web browsing.
I'm disappointed that this review totally misses the mark.
I've been testing numerous Optimus configurations myself lately and have discovered some SERIOUS issues with [at least the Optimus version of] switchable graphics technology: Web browsing.
Web browsers today increasingly accelerate CSS3, SVG and Flash; however, GPU's have yet to catch up to this trend. As a result rendering performance is abysmal on a Dell XPS 15 with an Intel 2720QM CPU + NVIDIA GeForce 540. Not just with web acceleration. Changing window sizes, basic desktop / Aero UI stuff is like a slideshow. I upgrade from a Dell XPS 16 with the Radeon 3670, and the overall experience has been reduced from a liquid-smooth Windows environment to a slideshow.
Granted, gaming performance is not bad but that's not the issue.
Running the latest drivers for everything.
I was hoping to see this topic researched better in this article. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkThere's really not much to say in regards to power and battery life, assuming the switchable graphics works right. When the dGPU isn't needed, both AMD and NVIDIA let the IGP do all the work, so then we're looking at Sony vs. Acer using Intel i5-2410M. BIOS and power optimizations come into play, but the two are close enough that it doesn't make much of a difference. (I posted the battery life results above if you're interested, and I still plan on doing a full review of the individual laptops.)
I'm curious what sites/tests/content you're using that create problems with CSS3/SVG/Flash. My experience on an Intel IGP only is fine for everything I've done outside of running games, but admittedly I might not be pushing things too hard in my regular use. Even so, the latest NVIDIA drivers should allow you to run your browser on dGPU if you need to -- have you tried that? Maybe your global setting has the laptop set to default to IGP everywhere, which might cause some issues. But like I said, specific sites and interactions that cause the sluggishness would be useful, since I can't rule out other software interactions from being the culprit otherwise. Reply
fynamo - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkTried all of the driver tweaks, forced browsers hw accel, all to no avail. Firefox and Chrome both will use only IGP despite forcing them in NVIDIA control panel.
In reality, most people aren't going to notice CSS3 sluggishness because very few sites actually employ CSS3 currently. But as a developer of bleeding-edge apps that are indeed using CSS3, and which we are also developing for mobile, I am HIGHLY sensitive to performance.
As stated - on Optimus, css3 performance sucks. On AMD, css3 performance is orders of magnitude better.
The other issue is with resizing and dragging windows. I noticed that the "SYSTEM" process in Task Manager (Windows 7 64) spikes to use a single full CPU core while resizing or dragging a window, and the drag / move animation slows to ~10 FPS or less. I did NOT have this problem on my "old" Radeon 3670 machine.
The same tests on a desktop, also with Windows 7 64 and with a Radeon 6850 (no IGP), show liquid-smooth and no CPU spike.
I've tested multiple Optimus systems and all have this problem, but my tests with AMD systems have yielded good results each time. Reply
Spazweasel - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkWhen people ask why I stick with nVidia graphics cards, this article sums up all my reasons well:
1. nVidia for many years has done a much better job of delivering timely driver updates, better driver stability, and multi-GPU scaling. SLI "just works". Crossfire is a crapshoot.
2. I have never had a problem with a game that was related to an nVidia driver. I cannot say the same of AMD.
3. AMD certainly has somewhat faster hardware at a given price point, but that doesn't matter if the games crash, if the driver UI sucks, or they can't get their partners to deliver what few driver updates there are.
4. I have many friends and acquaintances in the gaming industry. Without exception, they have reported that nVidia is much, much easier to deal with and is more responsive to the concerns of game developers than AMD. nVidia will often give you some of their own engineer-time to help you work through a problem, while AMD's response is "RTFM, go away, stop bothering us". This is likely why games have fewer driver-related issues upon initial release with nVidia than AMD; nVidia will help you before your game is on the market (and include the necessary changes to their drivers in advance of the game's release), while AMD is unresponsive during development, and often well into retail.
Secondarily, never buy a Sony computing product. You'd better be happy with the drivers that come with it, because you're not going to see new ones. Over the years I've had two laptops made by Sony, and both were orphaned within 18 months of purchase (driver updates on OSs which were current when the product was new stopped, and newer OSs never got a driver at all). Sony is terrible at ongoing driver support, regardless of what the hardware category (video, audio, input device, peripheral connection hardware) is. I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing software-related which Sony can get right, on either a technical nor ethical basis, and that planned obsolescence through early termination of software support is explicitly part of their business strategy.
My most recent AMD experience is a 4870, which was (and is) fast, loud, and unstable. I've thought about a 6570 for an HTPC, mostly for thermal reasons and packaging reasons (if you want a quiet, cool video card capable of moderate detail-level gaming to feed a 720p TV that is low-profile, you're pretty much limited to AMD), so it's about time for me to see if anything's changed. In the meantime, for my heavy-duty gaming machine, it's nVidia and will remain so until AMD's driver team gets its act together, regardless of how nice AMD's hardware is. Seriously, the hardware team at AMD needs to put the beat-down on the Catalyst guys; the driver team is making everyone look bad. Reply
tecknurd - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkI completely agree. ATI never wrote reliable and stable drivers. Also they gave me a run-around by saying to update to the latest drivers which I did at the time, but the graphic drivers still crashed my setup. Now AMD owns ATI and they have the same faults as ATI. People say that Radeon graphics is good, but this article shows they do not care for reliability and stability which are require for GUI.
I switched to nVidia because of poor driver support from ATI. Also poor driver support in Linux for Radeon graphics. IMHO, the open source community does a better job writing drivers for Radeon graphics compared to AMD.
I would buy AMD for their CPU but not for their graphics. Reply
chinedooo - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkhaha the dv6t with a 6770m would kill all these other laptops. And it switches perfectly too. I get like 6-7 hrs web browsing on mine. Reply
chinedooo - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkAnother difference between the two is the vram. the 6700 series uses gddr5. makes a world of difference. Reply
Hrel - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - link"and the user can add their own custom apps". Does this mean we can pick and choose if the dgpu is on or off on a per app basis? I spoke to Nvidia and they said you CAN do that in the Nvidia control panel. I just don't know how. I have the Clevo P151HM laptop, so maybe the option isn't even there on mine. I'd still like you guys to tell us how to do this, assuming it's possible.
Side note, I'm annoyed this laptop only accepts drivers from Clevo, and not from Nvidia. Reply
tanjo - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - link3 years and it's still not working properly???
The best solution is to add ultra low power 2D power state on dGPUs. Reply
orangpelupa - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkactually you can install GENERIC driver from ATi to update the laptop with switchable graphic.
just dont use the auto detect app from ATi. it useless. always decline to download the driver....
i have been long time using Acer with Intel + Radeon HD 5650. i can always update the ATi driver using generic from ati website.
for acer i just install the 11-8_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe
but if the installer decline to install, you can update while using modded inf
http://game.bramantya.org/modded-inf-ati-mobility-... (sorry have not uploaded the 11.8 modded inf)
if still failed, can update manually from device manager.
just make sure before doing any update with "generic" driver is graphic switched to dGPU mode from the shortcut in right click menu in desktop.
that updating generic, work old laptop with "screen flicker when switch graphic". so i dont know if its work with the new dynamic switching ATi.
Anyone with this new DYNAMIC switching want to try? Reply
my2cents - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkJust my 2 cents. I was searching around web and found site, some blog, where some dude is creating ATI + Intel switchable graphics. I own myself a Vaio VPC-SA2S9R. Just google "leshcat_dot_blogspot_dot_com". Works good so far. Reply
RenderB - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkSadly the nvidia tool isn't doing much better. Have the same optimus config as tested, but from asus. The auto detect will always tell me to go get drivers from clearcube. Reply
Death666Angel - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - link"but then why even have dynamic switching in the first place?"
That is a good question. I myself would prefer a solution that lets me decide what to do. I wouldn't prefer dynamic switching, because I want to be in control of my hardware as much as possible. Reboot switching is of course a pain in the butt, but I see nothing wrong with a short cut manual switch for iGPU/dGPU switching. Would be preferable to me actually.
But otherwise, thanks for the article. Reply
mars2k - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkI purchased a Lenovo W520 on the first day of release. Got the Thinkpad and could never get the graphics to perform correctly. Integration with the Intel board was lousy. Lenovo's support team could do nothing. I returned the machine. I'm thinking buggy drivers were the problem.
My particular problem revolved around using multiple monitors. Connecting disconnecting or configuring multi monitors would often require a reboot. Worse than worthless! Reply
Wolfpup - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - link"With all my talk of switchable graphics, though, let's make one thing clear: switchable graphics is not necessarily the Holy Grail of mobile GPUs. The true ideal in my opinion is mobile GPUs that can run fast when needed (i.e. playing games), while also being able to power off large portions of the chip and RAM and get down to IGP levels of power consumption."
THANK you for that! That's the first time I've heard that said since all this switchable graphics stuff started.
As far as I'm concerned, the GPU situation on notebooks is a disaster, and right when I thought we were finally moving in the first direction, this switchable stuff came out.
As it is now, a HUGE percent of notebooks can't use Nvidia or AMD's normal drivers. Sandy Bridge + AMD shouldn't even be on the market, and shouldn't be considered by anyone. As the article mentions-you can't use normal drivers for those, at least not today. (AMD + AMD should work sooner or later, although the A series CPUs aren't listed yet in the driver download box on AMD.com...my little c50 notebook is supported though, so hopefully the A stuff will be soon too.)
I just bought Asus' G74, which I've really liked-and one of the reasons I bought it was that it DOESN'T use switchable graphics, and it DOES use normal drivers from Nvidia. Some more expensive systems with even better GPUs can't use the normal drivers, which IMO just isn't acceptable in a $1000 purchase, let alone a $2000+ purchase.
At any rate, Nvidia's current GPUs underclock themselves to a very impressive 50mhz, several times slower even than my Geforce 9650GT from 3 years back. As mentioned, get power gating in there, and just get rid of Optimus and AMD's equivalent. Get rid of that complexity, driver/compatibility weirdness, etc.
Even once switchable graphics are gone, we're STILL not there yet...as the article mentions, most of Sony and Toshiba's notebooks can't be updated. Sager's stuff apparently can't, etc.
My Asus N80 from 3 years ago and my G74 both accept Nvidia.com driver updates just like a desktop system, no hacks, nothing weird, it just works. And that's how it should be! Reply
Anato - Friday, September 23, 2011 - linkShouldn't be too difficult to make GPU which can divide resources so that parts of the unit can be shut down. Even CPU's can do that and they are executing same code as compared to GPU which can be more liberal on architecture. Reply
JonnyDough - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link"If nothing else, Sony at least knows how to tune their laptops for long battery life."
Now if they can just make PS3 networking that isn't so hackable, batteries that don't explode, and Blu-Ray discs that don't cost 4X as much as an up-scalable DVD. At least they are smart enough to partner up with AMD. Reply
pman6 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - linkAMD's solution definitely seems half assed. Their drivers are always crap.
...just like how they rolled out the mobile llano hybrid crossfire with crap performance.
seems like they can never get the drivers right.
I have a llano laptop with crossfire, and you would think they would be able to do split frame rendering to improve performance. but 99% of the time, crossfire game performance is worse than discrete alone.
AMD needs to get their crap together. Reply
netkcid - Friday, September 23, 2011 - linkgood job trying to switch and run dx11 apps on a dx10 igp... and then complain about it...dur Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 24, 2011 - linkAll of the games should run on the Intel IGP; none of them are DX11 only. Double dur. The point is that they're not switching over to the IGP when the laptop is set to do so. But that's not really the major issue -- if you're running a game, you'll want it on the dGPU 99% of the time. The real issue is that the dynamic switching failed to work properly. When the competition can make it work properly, and when your non-dynamic generally can work properly, then your drivers are not finished and certainly not worthy of WHQL certification (which has apparently become a joke these days). Reply
medi01 - Sunday, September 25, 2011 - link"Before we get to the actual meat of this review, we have a disclaimer to make: both laptops we're comparing came to us via NVIDIA. Now, before anyone cries "foul!", let me explain..."
Let me explain: AMD not sending you whatever you want is not a good enough reason to do hidden ads for nVidia. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - linkThanks for speaking for AMD, but I talked to them over four times throughout the course of this review. I've had this hardware since July, if that helps you figure out how much I've been waiting for AMD to step up with something better. In effect, I told AMD when I first got the laptop, "Look guys, I've got a Sony VAIO C with Intel + AMD dynamic switchable graphics, and there are problems. There are also no recent drivers. This review won't be favorable toward your solution if you can't get me something better." If I had given them a week, or even two, sure, but two months is more than enough time to give me something better if such a thing exists.
Sticking up for AMD's solution just because it's from AMD is not a reason enough to do so. The solution as it currently stands is broken. It can be fixed, but until it actually IS fixed, I cannot recommend buying it. Like I said, I'd rather have AMD discrete GPU without switchable graphics on a laptop, because then at least I can get driver updates. And if you don't need driver updates, you don't really need a discrete GPU in your laptop. Reply
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