Help me understand my graphics

[JonathanGennick]

I've a T410 with an NVIDIA NVS 3100M graphics chip. NVIDIA's System Information panel reports the dedicated video memory at 256MB.

What exactly do I have here? Should I be able to switch into integrated graphics mode? I had thought that all NVS 3100M solutions were switchable, but are they? I'm beginning to think that I somewhat misunderstood what I was buying.

[Adda]

Not all T410's have Optimus (nVidia's switchable graphics), it's only an optional feature that got added to the T410 a while after it's release.
Optimus works automatically, switching between video cards depending on usage, the user has no control over it as far as I know.
Optimus is NOT Linux friendly, and this is most likely one of the reasons why not all T410's have Optimus.

[JonathanGennick]

Thanks Adda. What you say confirms what I had been suspecting. My bad for not fully researching what I bought on eBay. Sometimes it is difficult to tease out these minor details.

This is my first-ever laptop having a dedicated video chip. I wanted that chip because I sometimes edit photos and other images, and am hoping that the video chip can take some of the load from the CPU. I'm just discovering that battery life is not so great though. In future, I may trade up to an Optimus-enabled machine.