W520 graphics -- Lenovo or nVidia driver?

[npish]

Just curious which driver people are using for their Quadro graphics cards-- i.e. the one provided by Lenovo or that by nVidia? It appears that nVidia's is a more recent version, so I'm wondering if anyone has tried it? On a related note, do OEMs in some way customize the installations of graphics cards in laptops such as this one or is it pretty much direct from the component manufacturer?

[davidhbrown]

I tried the nVidia driver -- and the latest Intel Processor Graphics 3000 driver at the same time -- with "interesting" results.

The green band I'd get when viewing Youtube videos in Firefox went away, which was nice. Also in remission was a weird glitch where my two docked monitors would suddenly disconnect, moving all the windows to the notebook itself. Still saw a brief video interruption, but the monitors would reconnect fast enough that the windows stay put and I didn't have to select extend and move things back myself.

However, I started getting corrupt renders out of Adobe Media Encoder (CS5.5) which is rather more work-critical. (AME uses the CUDA cores of the Quadro 2000 to speed rendering.)

I went back to the Lenovo driver and switched Firefox to always use the Intel GPU. Renders went back to normal and Youtube is fine.

As it happens, I just now installed the latest Intel driver only, leaving the nVidia driver alone. That monitor disconnect glitch was bothering me and I wanted to see what might happen. It shouldn't affect rendering, I hope... but a test may be inconclusive because I also just installed the CS6 version of the Adobe software. Still, I'll let you know what happens.

Oops... forgot to hit submit. The video rendered fine, and after a few hours (far from conclusive) all three monitors are still connected.

[npish]

thanks for your response, David. I decided to just go with the Lenovo driver and see how it behaves. I have no real need for the switchable graphics, so I changed to "discrete" in BIOS and I'm waiting for my dock to arrive so I can attach my DVI monitor, etc. and hopefully everything will play nice. I too installed CS6 so it will be interesting to see how PS performs in particular.

strange about the green band in viewing YouTube videos; I'll have to see if I have the same issue.

[npish]

here's an update on my end-- I found that with using only discrete graphics that the fan seemed to be on full blast all the time, so I reverted to switchable in BIOS and that has helped immensely. However, I have also experienced that same issue with my external monitor suddenly disconnecting, moving all the windows to the notebook display, which is highly annoying (I'm using the dock, with a single NEC MultiSync LCD2490WUXi2 display connected via DVI.) This problem has only happened a couple times, but it's bothersome nonetheless. Have you managed to correct this glitch by updating just the Intel drivers?

[davidhbrown]

I am still seeing a weird thing where the monitors all go blank for a moment -- a lot like if the video driver crashes, but there's nothing in the event log. But with the driver setup I described (first Lenovo for NVIDIA and Intel, then Intel for Intel only), the windows are all reappearing where I left them.

[npish]

ok thanks david; if I continue to experience the issue, I'll give your approach a try.

[Dimitri_P]

Definitely Lenovo.

Otherwise Optimus switching is not working right.

If you don't want Optimus graphics switching - then use whatever latest nVidia has.

[Dimitri_P]

New nVidia driver, posted on this page:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/researc ... D=HT050904

June 5 2012

Not reflected on main W520 driver page yet.

[npish]

looks like the new June 5 video driver is for W530, no?

[Dimitri_P]

looks like the new June 5 video driver is for W530, no?

correct; my bad.

[davidhbrown]

It's slightly possible that the disconnect / momentary blackness glitch I had with the Lenovo driver might have been another one of those little things (like thinking the battery is out of power way too soon) that happen on this machine with TPFanControl installed. I'm done rendering video for a while, so I removed tpfancontrol from startup and I haven't noticed that problem recur. Way too few data points to be sure.