[Laptops] nVidia Optimus and Oculus

I came across in another post & verified with a little research that the Oculus Rift will not work on Optimus systems. Is VR completely out of reach for future laptop users in which the majority of systems are Optimus? It even says on their site that while the rift may work on some laptops, it's unsupported and less likely if you have AMD or nVidia Optimus.

Who decided optimus was a good idea? If I wanted a laptop that maximized battery life I would get one without a GPU!!

I like laptops. Unity runs well on a laptop. I assume the stem system will run well on a laptop. Are any upcoming VR headsets going to be able to run on a laptop? Are there any laptops that don't use this ridiculous setup?

 

My Asus G751 doesn't have Optimus. Rather annoyingly, it also doesn't let me switch from the 970m to the Intel HD manually either. Which isn't really a problem from a user perspective, but as a developer I'd like to see how my game runs on the Intel.

 

Do they make laptops with only a dedicated gpu? I was reading something on a forum about sager laptops that had only a single gpu.

An issue with systems that don't let you switch (even with third party software) is that oculus tends to pick the wrong one and then you're screwed.

I have a lot of bad experience with asus because the first and last one I owned was a g53sw. The charger on that thing broke like every 3 days (3 days after the several month span of it being away for repairs).

I'm fine going without a VR view initially while I figure the STEM out, but I definitely in the future would like to have everything working together. Maybe by that point all of this will be a non-issue because I'll have a desktop dedicated to gaming / I'll have a homebrew solution for PS4 that is STEM compatible.

 

I didn't realize the Oculus might pick the wrong one. I guess it depends on how the manufacturer goes about disabling it if they don't allow you to switch?

My laptop pretty much doesn't move, so I've never even unplugged it. I did accidentally bump the connector and disconnect it though. Gave me quite a surprise when the laptop complained about having low battery.

I'm not sure how well Oculus runs on laptops anyhow. They recommend a 970 GPU, which I'm assuming is a fair bit more powerful than the 970m. I guess it depends on what you want to do.

 

I think (hope) they were referring to less tech savvy people who might not go into their graphics settings and set things correctly. In optimus systems, if you want application x to use your gpu at a certain resolution, you need to set your desktop to that resolution (on your cpu) and set your scaling options there. Otherwise, the application, when fullscreen, will be a small window with a HUGE black border on all sides. Everything in optimus is needlessly complex and poorly designed and other words with negative connotation!

Yes. A proper optimus system will not have the gpu connected to the display or hdmi out at all, so there will be nothing to switch :/

Me too. I want basically a desktop with a mounted screen. I never move it unless I'm moving to another house. No matter where I move it, it's never operated off battery. They must just be really insecure about their battery life next to Apple. My 2012 machine still has 4x the battery life of my relatively new and less used (currently still less used day to day) gigabyte machine.

Sager has 980m Also didn't realize how finicky oculus was before yesterday. That's a pretty heavy requirement for something that cannot even handle SLI. I wonder where laptop gpus will be when the nVidia pascal comes out. A cute little chip with 16GB memory and 10x the performance of a titan.

With that said, let us be unable to fathom where technology beyond that will go as the Wely Fermion is studied.

 

Yes I have the model above Hemi's G751 and it only has a dedicated 980M, nothing else and doesn't use optimus. It runs just like a desktop would, in terms of power it sits between a desktop 770 and 970.

Downsides: it's a brick... Actually a brick is much lighter than this laptop. It's very expensive compared to a desktop, which of course it would be.

Pro's: It's FAST, combined with an M.2 it feels every bit as quick as my desktop in most applications (lightmapping is slower, which let's face it won't ever beat a desktop hexacore). It's a perfect solution for a desktop replacement and I've had no issues with VR. Plus IMO it's very well built..

P.S battery life is about 2 hours maxxed out.

 

Thanks for confirming this!

I am coming from a lifestyle of macbooks so anything under $3k is a steal! As for the weight, pff, I don't care if my laptop weighs 1lb or 60. I don't even care if it weighs fluid ounces. As long as it operates as a computer, the details don't matter to me.

No issues with VR, you say? Any headsets in particular that you would recommend?

What is the battery life while plugged in? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

@Tomnnn Did you see that Oculus is working with laptop vendors and GPU vendors to get an Oculus approval stamp going? Should be starting early next year.

 

Oculus from what I tried worked well, BTW the point on the battery is you can actually work / mess around on it without it being permanently being attached to a wall. I had a "sager" equivalent with a 780M and it didn't do anywhere near as well, also the screen broke after like 8 months ..

 

Since a 970 is the recommended GPU and not the minimum requirements, I'm sure the 970m would work okay. I'm just not sure how VR scales down. With a regular game, it doesn't matter so much if you scale down the graphics and it gets ugly, or if it only runs at 45fps, or whatever. From what I understand, VR really needs to be matching the 90hz refresh rate or whatever it is. And I'm sure you need all the graphical quality you can get if you are going to trick your mind into thinking you are really in that world.

 

I thought that I remember reading that the issue with Optimus is that it maxed out at 60Hz whether or not you were using the dedicated GPU. I could be wrong.

 

@GoesTo11 There might be but the big problem I thought was that it has to send the out to the other graphics card which then would have to have the correct adapter/driver/hardware support.

 

There is a laptop with the desktop GTX 980 in it. At that point though I feel like you're better off with an actual desktop.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...p-gtx-980-gpu-into-monster-17-inch-notebooks/

 

One of the reasons my Asus stays in the same place is because it is heavy and bulky. It isn't really heavy in the sense that it is hard to lift, but it certainly isn't something you are just gonna grab on your way out the door or whatever. At least it is portable to the extent that I can take it to a friend's house the same way I would an XBox or something.

I wouldn't really want a 980 for my purposes though. I don't have time to play games and developing on the 970m already has me saying, "Well, sure the game runs at over 70fps on this, but what will it do on a GTS 450?" Until I get it far along enough to get into the hands of other people, I'm just relying on benchmarks to guesstimate what performance will be. Of course, the frame rate shoots up if I turn off all the fancy and expensive screen space effects so I'm not too concerned, except the frame rate police apparently don't like that option. Still be nice to know though. I rely pretty heavily on real time lighting and there isn't much my custom light and shadow culling code can do when I start modelling the more spacious areas of the levels

 

That's going to be interesting since the majority of systems (that I have seen) are optimus now.

Totally beyond my requirements. I need enough wire length to move my head and otherwise I'm stationary.

Sounds like a killer for laptops which (in their stupid new design) cannot do that

If I don't build a super computer I'll probably go with that. As long as the machine doesn't overheat.

If we can get an nvidia pascal in a laptop then I'm definitely sticking with them