Thinkpads Forum

does the t410 support switching graphics in the bios? shut off the nvidia graphics and use Intel only?

dux5 wrote:does the t410 support switching graphics in the bios? shut off the nvidia graphics and use Intel only?

Yes it does. You get three options. Nvidia only, Intel only, or the crappy Optimus mode that uses both. This is true for the T420, W510 and W520 as well.

I am finding mostly post from 2010 that says it does not support Optimus, unless they changed the bios or something? they released some models after October that did support Optimus, so did they add support to all t410? I can't find anything on google, it all says no. Lenovo disabled support it on the t410.

It's possible, I suppose. I think the earlier models had Nvidia NVS 3100 with 256MB RAM and i5-520M or i7-620M. The later models have Nvidia NVS 3100 with 512MB RAM and i5-540M or i7-640M. I have a later model and it has always had Optimus support. I updated the BIOS twice over the time I owned it.

Really though, why would you want Optimus? It sucks a lot more power than Intel only, and the performance seems to me to be less than Nvidia only.

jayton4 wrote:It's possible, I suppose. I think the earlier models had Nvidia NVS 3100 with 256MB RAM and i5-520M or i7-620M. The later models have Nvidia NVS 3100 with 512MB RAM and i5-540M or i7-640M. I have a later model and it has always had Optimus support. I updated the BIOS twice over the time I owned it.

Really though, why would you want Optimus? It sucks a lot more power than Intel only, and the performance seems to me to be less than Nvidia only.

i want to be able to switch in the bios, I don't want both cards running at the same time, I would use intel on linux and NV on windows.

dux5 wrote:i want to be able to switch in the bios, I don't want both cards running at the same time, I would use intel on linux and NV on windows.

Ok, then the T410 will give you this ability.