W520 Win10 + Optimusless Nvidia M2000

[thumperer]

Hi all,

I could really use some assistance getting my Nvidia M2000 up and running on my newly installed Win10 Pro W520. I must say that getting Win10 onto this machine was a fight. Multiple failed installs. Had to tweak and fight multiple issue, but finally have it running smoothly. That is all except the Nvidia!

When I was running Win7 on this machine I shut off Optimus & manually set the M2000 in the BIOS. Found it to be much more powerful, and less glitches. I have not been able to do the same on this Win10 installation.
All drivers seem to be installed correctly. No unknown devices in the device manager. If I try shutting off optimus and selecting the Nvidia is the BIOS (now on Win10) I get bumped down to 1024 resolution with no option to set it to 1080. I have tried downloading driver from Nvidia directly, I have tried letting Windows device manager automatically select drivers, I have tried to find ThinkPad System Update (which used to install drivers under Win7) but have found that there is no version for Win10.

Help! I need my graphix performance back,
Matthew

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

Help! I need my graphix performance back

Reverting back to W7 comes to mind....

[thumperer]

I held on to my beloved Win7 till now. But sadly it is getting phased out. More and more thing seem to not be supported on 7. Years of updates were starting to break things... I finally made the jump, and the performance of 10 actually feels better than 7 thus far.

Has not one managed to get the GPU working well on Win10?

[RealBlackStuff]

Nowadays, when I do a fresh installation, I still use Lenovo's W7/SP1 recovery disks, but immediately when the update question arises during install, I set it to "do not update"!
When the fresh W7 install is finished, I UNinstall all the bloatware, such as Adobe, Norton/Mcafee, Welcome, Warranty, Windows Life, Office, etc.
For antivirus I now use the free Bitdefender and also install free Malwarebytes, just in case.
Instead of Adobe's PDF-bloatjunk, I install the last Foxit Reader (V 7.2.8.1124) that can still display the Classic Mode and not that horrible space-wasting Ribbon.
Make sure to set the Edit/Preferences/Updater to Never, otherwise you lose the Classic Menubar!
Then I check the Device Manager for missing items, and also check around (if I don't have them already) for the best drivers for graphics and system.
And Windows itself doesn't get any update at all, ever (at least not from me...).
Remarkable how well everything runs!
And W7 will continue to do so for many more years after Micro$haft stops supporting it in 2020.
Look at XP, still going strong!

[thumperer]

I personally am on the different end of that spectrum. I usually accept all updates within a month or 2 of them being released (after researching that they are stable). I think there is good reason for the updates. They usually do fix things. But the current state of updates after a fresh Win7 install will bring probably several 100. Starting with the service pack usually helps to cut down most of that number

Regarding Adobe I cant agree with your more. I have found that digging through the View menu - you can get rid of the ribbon BS, and set the new view to default... this usually works great till the next major update.

[pkiff]

When I was running Win7 on this machine I shut off Optimus & manually set the M2000 in the BIOS. Found it to be much more powerful, and less glitches. I have not been able to do the same on this Win10 installation.

I haven't tried configuring my W520 M1000 to use Optimusless nVidia graphics. But it could well be that some flexibility regarding that configuration has been lost under Windows 10. On the other hand, I've not run into any glitches by just letting Optimus decide when to use nVidia and when to use the built-in graphics onboard the Intel CPU. Though admittedly, I don't have very many needs that actually push my graphics card aside from very infrequent gaming.

[thumperer]

I'm at the opposite end of that spectrum. I mainly use the W520 for 4K video editing - thus I have no need for the Intel graphics. I would rather due away with optimus, and just run the Nvidia.
I sure hope I can get this solved in order to have a backup system to run beside my upcoming P72.

Finding hard to believe that no one else ran into this before me, or everyone gave up and just went back to Win7