[DustFalcon85]

Ok I just bought this MSI GT70 Dominator.-895 - that hopefully it'll replace my aging desktop - and boy I am not happy w/ it. Why? I point to 1 huge problem: The NVidia Optimus technology. Now I can't play the GOG.com Shadow Warrior (2013) and possibility but untested other games too. Tried to click "Run w/ High-Performance Nvidia Card" or something like that and I get something like: You don't have permission to use this graphics setting.

That does it. I'm avoiding laptops w/ the NVidia Optimus tech. It seems the 970m and the 980m doesn't have it. Luckily my other laptop doesn't have this Optimus tech. Here's the list of mobile video cards that have this: http://www.geforce.c.../supported-gpus

This time I'm getting laptop w/ an 970m, a new desktop, or any laptop that doesn't have this Optimus shit. Get your shit together NVidia. Kick Optimus to the fucking curb!

Too bad Protected by Viper is missing out on this one. I'll have to wait till he's off suspension and hops in to join the fun.

[oasiz]

This tech is really half-assed. Want to mirror display with laptop and external display? No can't do that, because those are different graphics chips.
In this case it just switched from nvidia to intel graphics and mirrored that one.. just great.
Switching between integrated + discrete is just abstracted in a way that doesn't simply work well for anything else than the officially blessed & supported software. I don't even understand how that works as the drivers have no clear indication for that aside from that "performance setting"

One way that my friend managed to get around acceleration limitations is to enable a fake display trough analog VGA output (even though there is nothing connected). Forcing this will change the GPU mode to be fully accelerated and work somehow.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

DustFalcon85, on 16 December 2014 - 10:46 AM, said:

You don't have permission to use this graphics setting.

Wow. And I thought privilege escalation in Windows Vista/7 was bad. Who decides whether or not you get permission? The manufacturer of the card? The game distributor? The EPA? Samuel Jackson?

[DustFalcon85]

Correction: The message actually says "You don't have the privilege to select the graphics processor in this menu" every time I right click on an .exe to run the NVidia processor. Somebody tell what the fuck is going on here?

UPDATE: Blame it all on NVidia's Optimus tech for the Intel graphics/Geforce woes.

[DustFalcon85]

Does anyone have a laptop w/ Intel HD Graphics & NVidia that has this problem w/ assigning the video cards? Maybe Viper can help me out.

[TerminX]

Make sure your BIOS is configured for switchable graphics, then update your Intel GPU driver, then update your NVIDIA driver. I've never had these kind of issues on systems I've had that used Optimus. You might also check event viewer to see if any errors or warnings get logged when you get the message about not having permission to use the GPU. I assume your account has administrator privileges?

[Person of Color]

I think you're hosed. You might be able to fix it now, but down the road you may be fucked. Automatic switching is the worst. I recently had to reformat an HP laptop that had first generation Intel HD Graphics from 2010 and a Radeon 6000 series. Loading the newest drivers was impossible, the machine would freeze for 30 seconds at the welcome screen and at UAC prompts, then the audio would skip for like 5 seconds. Flash made the system shit it's drawers too. This was a VERY nice laptop with a full metal chassis and a nice 17" screen and it was basically useless for even light gaming despite being only four years old.

As parts get older, the software should always become more stable...not the other way around. The Radeon 3670 in my Dell is bulletproof because they didn't use switchable graphics.

I had to run years old drivers direct from HP in order for it to be stable. Fortunately the customer was a DJ and never used it for gaming.

Macs are the only systems with stable automatic switchable graphics. My dad's MBP has no issues. Granted, we've only had it for a week, but these things have been around for a year now and no one is bitching. If you're buying a PC get one with a physical switch, or no integrated graphics at all.

Personally I'd keep your old laptop and build a desktop, or upgrade a refurbished one with a good CPU.

[DustFalcon85]

TerminX, on 22 December 2014 - 05:13 PM, said:

Make sure your BIOS is configured for switchable graphics, then update your Intel GPU driver, then update your NVIDIA driver. I've never had these kind of issues on systems I've had that used Optimus. You might also check event viewer to see if any errors or warnings get logged when you get the message about not having permission to use the GPU. I assume your account has administrator privileges?

Tried to look it in there but the MSI GT70 Dominator laptop doesn't have that switchable graphics options in the BIOS. Shadow Warrior (2013) also got detected in this MSI Apache 033 w/ an GTX 850m I very briefly owned. Oh BTW. NVidia has updated the graphics driver. Shadow Warrior (2013) not only has this Optimus problem but Diablo 3 as well (even though I don't own it). Just took the GT70 back to an Amazon.com and thinking a/b getting it again this time at NewEgg.com.

[Person of Color]

What's the advantage to having a huge, unwieldy laptop like a GT70? My old Asus G51 was a featherweight by modern gaming laptop standards and that thing is a fucking brick compared to my Dell.

Why not just build a desktop and keep the old laptop for porn and 8chan?

[DustFalcon85]

BREAKINGTHELAYOUT ISACRIME, on 23 December 2014 - 10:10 PM, said:

What's the advantage to having a huge, unwieldy laptop like a GT70? My old Asus G51 was a featherweight by modern gaming laptop standards and that thing is a fucking brick compared to my Dell.

Why not just build a desktop and keep the old laptop for porn and 8chan?

If you can ask the higher-ups at Micro Center to get off their dicks and set up shop in Lexington and expand into other territories, then I'll consider building a new desktop.

I'll talk a/b laptop later. Gotta take care of things.

[Forge]

laptop power plan = high performance, not power saver

also:
nvidia control panel - global settings- multi display mixed gpu acc - single display performance mode and power management mode - prefer maximum performance

disable Metro Apps
disable UAC : Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode

disable GPU boost settings in BIOS
graphics in BIOS are 'Auto" (PCIe, igpu)

download NVIDIA Inspector
- Configuration icon
- profiles tab select the game
- Enable application for optimus - set to "SHIM_RENDERING_MODE_ENABLE"

[Person of Color]

DustFalcon85, on 24 December 2014 - 07:54 AM, said:

If you can ask the higher-ups at Micro Center to get off their dicks and set up shop in Lexington and expand into other territories, then I'll consider building a new desktop.

I'll talk a/b laptop later. Gotta take care of things.

Just buy the parts from Amazon or Jewegg. Although Newegg's customer service kind of sucks now IMO.

[Person of Color]

Forge, on 24 December 2014 - 08:31 AM, said:

laptop power plan = high performance, not power saver

also:
nvidia control panel - global settings- multi display mixed gpu acc - single display performance mode and power management mode - prefer maximum performance

disable Metro Apps
disable UAC : Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode

disable GPU boost settings in BIOS
graphics in BIOS are 'Auto" (PCIe, igpu)

download NVIDIA Inspector
- Configuration icon
- profiles tab select the game
- Enable application for optimus - set to "SHIM_RENDERING_MODE_ENABLE"

...Or he could buy a computer that isn't a piece of shit.

That's A LOT of work to ensure your graphics card actually...well...renders anything. No guarantee those fixes will be long term, either.

[oasiz]

Returning with more woes, my little sister's laptop has issues with this one.

OBS (Livestreaming software) crashes all the time due to intel drivers crashing while capturing desktop (driver reset).
No matter what combination I use (quicksync, intel GPU, nvidia GPU, x264 software, etc..) it keeps crashing since intel forcibly renders the desktop.
Asus laptop and no option to change anything related to the GPU in the bios aside from allocated RAM (Intel I think).
There is simply no way to use nvidia only.

Updated drivers, changed power settings and whatnot.
It's simply impossible to capture desktop for longer than a minute without the drivers crashing.
Also the GPU is a 740M so it shouldn't be first gen issues either, just broken design.

When going for an optimus solution, make SURE that you can select nvidia-only if needed.
This really sucks

[Person of Color]

Optimus has never worked right, and it's five year old tech now.

It's just more bullshit from modern day Nvidia. How often do you see "switchable graphics" from AMD these days? But no, this is good! We gave it a name! And we trademarked it! It's called Optimus™! It's automatic! It's better than a switch! Sports cars are better when you have less control, right?!

Nvidia doesn't need quality products anymore, they've already convinced gamers they're the "best" around. Radeon drivers suck, you don't need compute performance or wide memory buses for FSAA or working HDMI or voltage adjustments. We're the "gold standard" despite our mile long list of defective or poorly engineered products we've been shitting out for years now. Seriously, go look at their forums. It's like a fucking COINTELPRO operation. The circle jerk is big enough to drown a pack of elephants.

I've already had more driver bugs in the past 10 months then I had in two years with my Radeon.

Fuck Nvidia and their shitty products, I'm going to sell this card and buy an R9-290 within the next couple months if I can afford it. The current price cut is too good to be true. I've owned so many great Nvidia cards over the years, but I can't deal with this company's cynical bullshit anymore. Like I said before, never, ever ever fuck your high end customers. Look at what General Motors did to Cadillac back in the 80's. Oh, and you know what's worse than fucking your high end customers? Fucking people by soldering a defective product to a proprietary motherboard that's part of a system that's nearly a thousand bucks.

[Person of Color]

Hey, guys, can you disable Optimus in your BIOSes? My brother just bought an off lease Dell Latitude e6420 and after updating the BIOS the first thing we did was shut that shit off. We had no idea it had Optimus until we saw that checkbox. Actually, Micro Center claimed it had Intel HD 3000, not the 512MB Quadro NVS 4200m.

[DustFalcon85]

BREAKINGTHELAYOUT ISACRIME, on 13 January 2015 - 10:16 PM, said:

Hey, guys, can you disable Optimus in your BIOSes? My brother just bought an off lease Dell Latitude e6420 and after updating the BIOS the first thing we did was shut that shit off. We had no idea it had Optimus until we saw that checkbox. Actually, Micro Center claimed it had Intel HD 3000, not the 512MB Quadro NVS 4200m.

Nope. Not on the MSI GT70 Dominator 895. Looked everywhere in the BIOS and no option whatsoever. MSI laptops doesn't allow users to have that switchable graphics option I'm afraid. I've heard the 900m series doesn't have optimus support. If someone can buy an MSI w/ one of those 900m cards and prove that Shadow Warrior (2013) doesn't have that optimus-behind Intel HD Graphics. I might consider buying one next year or not. Good thing I sold that POS laptop. That thing was doing weird shit after I cloned the stock HDD to an SSHD like you can't use the recovery tools even w/ a OS disc, got a watermark like thing at the bottom-left screen and so on. I got pics below to prove. Probably a Windows 8.1 security measures and/or the UEFI in action to combat piracy. This is what it's like on a cloned SSHD:

Microsoft needs to get off it's high horse and allow the OS to be friendly w/ cloned drives.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[Person of Color]

Windows 8 is shit, I hate having to support it. It's saving grace is the auto reformat with user data backup, which is pretty spiffy.

[Striker]

Forge, on 24 December 2014 - 08:31 AM, said:

laptop power plan = high performance, not power saver

also:
nvidia control panel - global settings- multi display mixed gpu acc - single display performance mode and power management mode - prefer maximum performance

disable Metro Apps
disable UAC : Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode

disable GPU boost settings in BIOS
graphics in BIOS are 'Auto" (PCIe, igpu)

download NVIDIA Inspector
- Configuration icon
- profiles tab select the game
- Enable application for optimus - set to "SHIM_RENDERING_MODE_ENABLE"

^ Quoted for truth.

Also, if you still have permission issues, run as administrator, or disable UAC as a last resort.

[TerminX]

When Hendricks was here, I investigated the problem regarding not having permission to use the NVIDIA GPU from that menu. It was caused by the application having compatibility flags applied to it, and the non-administrative user explorer.exe (and thus the menu in question) runs under not having permission to override those flags.

You know what's worse than Optimus? AMD's version.

[Person of Color]

The switchable graphics menu wouldn't even loan on the Intel/AMD HP I worked on.

AMD's version is indeed worse, but it's rare as hen's teeth, and isn't given a spiffy name by marketing executives, so who cares?

Nvidia only cares about money, they're even scummier than Intel is in certain ways. It's like the whole V8-6-4 fiasco Cadillac had in the early 80's. GM just wanted to make money hand over fist and bypass CAFE regulations. It didn't work at all, and they made a huge deal about how much gas you'd save. It was unrefined even by prototype standards. I'll gladly buy Nvidia products again if they stop acting like 1980's GM all the fucking time.

[DustFalcon85]

Bumping this if you don't mind. Had to return the Eluktonics laptop. No thanks to this diagonal screen tearing I've experienced while playing Doom (2016) and Doom 3: BFG and that annoying IPS glow. Optimus seems to be the culprit even though I set it to the "Preferred NVidia Graphics Processor" or something like that. Other people are reporting this diagonally screen tearing too: https://forums.gefor...65m-970m-980m-/

This only effects NVidia Notebook/Laptop graphics. I've should've got this ThinkPad w/ an Intel/Radeon and Windows 7 Pro for Facebook, Traveling, DOSBox gaming, iTunes, Web surfing, and so on instead. But I'm still waiting for my refund. I'm also on fence if I want to get this ASUS G20CB-WB71-GTX1080 Performance Tower Desktop or that laptop. Trying to decide. I've heard G-Sync is making Optimus obsolete in the future. I can't wait for Optimus to be wiped off from the face of the Earth for good. It sure was cancer!

Bonus points to the guy who mentioned this on GeForce's forums: https://forums.gefor...911272/#4911272

Get some better engineers and kick out the shitty ones NVidia!

[oasiz]

Diagonal tearing happens easily when you have Vsync enabled on the integrated intel GPU.
Had a similar issue during one gaming event when we did video capture and turning it off for intel fixed it instantly.


Although +1 optimus suxx

[Valhalla]

Inspector Lagomorf, on 16 December 2014 - 02:27 PM, said:

Wow. And I thought privilege escalation in Windows Vista/7 was bad. Who decides whether or not you get permission? The manufacturer of the card? The game distributor? The EPA? Samuel Jackson?

Windows 10 anniversary edition is even worse, even with an administrator account and running programs as admin, half the crap still gives you "you do not have permissions" crap, I spent days hunting down solutions online, and finally found multiple programs and tricks that basically remove the stranglehold on windows 10 permissions. It's a LOT of work though. Honestly I'm seriously considering going back to windows 7. 10 is just a disaster. (Not quite vista levels of shit, but still pretty bad.)

[Person of Color]

Get a Dell Latitude. Fuck Lenovo. Between those spooky gooks with their BIOS adware and spyware, and their shit tier build quality, they're off my radar.

Go compare a Chinkpad to a Latitude or HP Elitebook and you'll immediately change your mind. I'm talking physically holding and interacting with the unit - Lenovo sucks dick.

As far as repairs go Latitudes are God tier. Super easy to work on and parts are readily available. Elitebooks are a pain in the ass to service and Chinkpads are hit and miss. All three are reliable but the Chinkpads are way easier to break, and has the worst ergonomics.