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Thruxomatic · ‎02-09-2015

I just picked up a new GR8 last week, and had some issues getting some of my Steam games (Skyrim, mainly), to recognize the main GPU (GTX 750Ti), and every time I disabled the onboard graphics (HD4400), the display crapped out altogether. This behaviour leads me to believe that the GR8 has some sort of hybrid software set up like Optimus handling the two GPUs collectively for best performance, but as far as I knew, desktop GPUs are not supported by Optimus, just the M series mobile GPUs.

So, can anyone else verify for me if my belief is correct and I'm dealing with an Optimus based system?

icwhatudidthere · ‎02-09-2015

Everything I've seen on the GR8 makes me think it's pretty much a laptop config. The review I link below says 3DMark picked up the card as an 860M. The processor specs also look like it's a mobile i7. So I think you're probably correct.

http://www.lazygamer.net/review/asus-rog-gr8-review-running-out-of-steam/

It looks like a cool little system, how do you like it so far? I saw a video on PCDIY's youtube channel (the 45 min video on the GR8) where they take it apart and it looks a lot easier to open than the G20, though of course more limited in what you can replace. They did show off an internal USB port that can accept a USB thumb drive and keep it hidden inside. Interesting feature, I wonder if that has its basis in being a Steam OS PC originally.

Thruxomatic · ‎02-10-2015

It looks like a cool little system, how do you like it so far?

Honestly? On day 2 of ownership, a simple ALT-TAB out of a game to the desktop killed my video to a black screen. Reboot and/or restart didn't fix it, and neither did a trip to Safe Mode to play around with disabling/enabling the video drivers, so I was ultimately forced to rebuild it from scratch via the rescue partition. Day 3 was Windows updates, re-installing all my apps, etc. and that's where I found out that Skyrim wouldn't recognize either video card and was using the Microsoft Render, for a whopping 1-2 fps, making the game unplayable. After multiple disable/enable trials to see if I could get the game to register the right card(s), plus some playing around in the nVidia control panel to set preference through that, with no success, I rebuilt it again from scratch because Skyrim had actually worked on day one. Day five was spent reinstalling Windows updates for the third time, and on the third and last update cycle, one of the updates was a fresh driver for the Intel HD GPU and that update killed the PC dead. Now I have a black screen, without even any BIOS text, and I can't get into Safe Mode or the recovery partition.

So, the reality is that it's packed up and getting returned tonight because this particular machine is effectively a beautiful looking brick at the moment. I am 100% in the market for this type of device, but ...

X-ROG · ‎02-09-2015

It is an Optimus system, yes. The 860M and 750 Ti are the same GPU cores. It uses notebook components to meet the strict thermal requirements of the tiny device.

toronto699 · ‎02-10-2015

optimus think asus would lean how awful it is so many problems optimus is useless technology

Thruxomatic · ‎02-10-2015

Optimus kind of has a place in keeping power consumption and heat down for non-straining tasks in a PC, but we're talking about a PC with one of the most efficient chips on the planet (i7-4510U @ 15W) and a pretty efficient GPU in the GTX860M @ 45W, already. The whole PC runs on a 120W power brick, even at full bore. If the idle consumption and heat generation of the GPU is high enough with the GTX860M that there's a need to opt for a GPU running at 22W instead of 45W for those tasks when the GPU is loafing, then this case needs more airflow, not a weaker GPU to ease down temperatures.

GR8 and nVidia Optimus question