Coinciding with their 60 million ThinkPads sold milestone, today Lenovo announced the availability of NVIDIA Optimus graphics in their ThinkPad T410, T410s, and T510 notebooks and their corresponding docking solutions.
What is NVIDIA Optimus?
Optimus actually refers to a new generation of switchable graphics, rather than an all-new GPU core. While prior switchable graphics technologies, including the latest from AMD/ATI as well, required manual switching between GPUs via software, Optimus is 100% automatic and transparent. The discrete NVIDIA GPU sits 100% powered down when it isn’t needed. When a need for graphics acceleration is detected, such as a game, HD video, or even Flash video, the Optimus software automatically powers on the discrete GPU. The frames rendered by the discrete GPU are sent to the integrated GPU over the PCI Express bus, where they can be output to the display.
First generation switchable graphics required a reboot to change GPUs and the second generation improved to a software change only, but both utilized complex and expensive hardware routing solutions. Optimus is implemented entirely in software, to the point that, if physically possible, you could remove the discrete GPU and Windows wouldn’t know the difference until it needed GPU acceleration.
The end result of Optimus is a transparent, seamless switchable graphics solution that gives up no battery life compared to integrated graphics only in non-accelerated situations. If you want a more technical look at Optimus, I recommend Anandtech’s article on the subject.
Update: I just came across this video from Lenovo on what Optimus does.
First in business
NVIDIA launched Optimus earlier this year and it has shown up in a handful of laptops, but no business-class machines. Lenovo is proud of the fact that they are the first to support Optimus in a business laptop and in the docking solutions.
Not only does Optimus’ slick GPU switching continue to operate when docked, but thanks to the NVS 3100M GPU you can output up to 4 external displays. Both of these are a first for Lenovo and Optimus in general, fitting to coincide with their anniversary of ThinkPad sales and recognition of its achievements.
Pricing and availability
The Optimus equipped ThinkPads are available for purchase today. It is a $100 option on the T410 and T510 models start at $1069, a $130 premium over integrated-ony. Unfortunately on the T410s you will shell out $1829, as the only configuration with Optimus includes the faster Core i5-560M CPU and pricey 128GB SSD. While this is a pricey combo, that is one well loaded machine that will give up no unnecessary battery life to its discrete graphics.
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