'Old school' confused geek

[Hazarath]

So, I just got a Leveno Y50 gaming laptop. Beautifully designed machine, well, on the outside, but... it seems to be confusing on the insides.

Back in my day, yes I said it, a GPU would be 'connected', for a lack of better terms, to the PCIe port, and handle all the tasks that a GPU generally would.

On this rig, however... from what I seem to understand... it seems instead of a port through a memory controller, it is tied directly to the i7 chip. While this seems like a good way to kill latency, it seems that I am now running... 2 GPUs? Someone, feel free to tell me I am being an idiot here.

So, assuming this is correct, does this mean that I have an Intel GPU handling my 2D rendering, and my GeForce GTX 860 taking over for 3D?

And, while we are on the bandwagon of assumptions, will my 3D rendering be limited to the Intel's 60 FPS? (I have a life, didn't have a chance to fire up a game yet, haha.)

Also... it would be cool to remove Intel's software now that I have my GeForce running, but, I am sure that'll be bad... but, if there is maybe an alternative driver someone knows of...

If anything, thanks for reading the rantings of an 'old geezer'... we'll, by geek standards. Haha.

 

[voyagerfan99]

Yes, you essentially have two GPU's, as new Intel chips have APU capabilities and power the HDX000 series GPU chips. This allows the laptop to save power when running on battery by using the onboard Intel chipset to do basic tasks such as web browsing and video viewing.

In the nVidia control panel, you can choose what applications use what GPU, or allow it to automatically select the GPU when needed.

 

[Geoff]

The video card still uses the PCI-E interconnect, but connects directly to the CPU. Many modern laptops that have dedicated video also have integrated video on the CPU. The computer switches between the two to preserve power, generally if you do anything video intensive like play a game, you will be using the dedicated GPU, while browsing the web uses the integrated.