W520 switchable graphics

[tpribors]

I finally switched completely to the W520. The system has the bright display and the combination graphics that supposedly switch between the internal Intel and external graphics card. The setup utility (right click on the desktop path) only pointed to the Intel hardware.

I never ever saw it use the external card. In fact, as near as I could tell the driver never installed.

I went to the BIOS and configured graphics for purely external and rebooted. Windows loaded a new driver and it is now happy.

Did I miss something or did a reinstall erase the combo graphics? What benefit is there? I wanted the external card to be primary anyway.

[jdrou]

I also noticed that when I changed the BIOS from "Optimus" to "nVidia" it installed a new driver.
I believe that Optimus, Intel-only, and nVidia-only are separate drivers within the Optimus package; only the Optimus driver will automatically switch between integrated and discrete graphics while Windows is running so when you change the BIOS setting it uses a different driver.

[Colonel O'Neill]

When you toggle the BIOS setting, it confuses Windows because devices have disappeared/appeared, so it reinstalls the driver.

As long as performance is of the level expected of the Quadro 2000M, you should be fine.