Nvidia Graphics panel on r3

hi guys so ive been doing alot of research and i downloaded gta 4 i have a m11x r3 i7 ...when i first played the game it was very laggy..then i realised about the nvidia control panel and i changed it from intergrated graphic to hi performance nvidia option...but i realise even if i add the game and set it in hi performance the game wont run hi performance unless the ac charger is plugged in...i can even tell the diffrence because my fan starts gettign a little louder and the game wont lag but once i remove the charge it lags and game is not playable is there a way i can keep it on hi performance without needing the AC thank you guys i know im a total noob for not know about this option but gta 4 is the only game that was laggy for me i havent had any problems

 

Right click on the battery icon on the task bar and click more power options, then if you are using "balanced" click advanced power settings. Now scroll down to Graphics processor and expand, now change "on battery" to max performance.

You can also set this though AlienFusion but it's very buggy on the R3, it wrecked all of my power settings so just go through the windows way.

 

well that helped alot thank you so much

 

If you get in a real pickle of wondering whether the GPU optimus is on or off just use this little tool I found yesterday Optimus test tools finally in users hands - LaptopVideo2Go Forums

 

Jedispooner is absolutely correct.

And you probably know this, but running with max performance while unplugged will drain your battery pretty quickly. Expect around 1.5 hours of battery life when running like that.

 

So am I right in saying that how the R1 worked with the 335m on battery provided better performance on battery, however the 540m in the R3 provides battery destroying power on battery but is even better plugged in?

My issues with the setting max performance power setting is that you'd think "balanced" would kick in enough power to play games but this doesn't seem the case. Balanced is unplayable.

I guess R3 owners should only game plugged in or suffer poor battery performance.

 

so jedispooner what does the actual optimus test tool do sorry im not so good with this ;(

 

You don't need the optimus test tool as now nvidia control panel comes with a tool for displaying optimus activity in the task bar. just go to nvidia control panel and click desktop and tick the display activity thingy. Optimus test tool was great when nvidia didn't bundle that with nvidia control panel, but now its useless.

Control panel works fine for me, just choose graphics settings in high performance mode from balanced to max power when on battery. works like a charm.

Balanced mode isn't doing too bad, i haven't tested how long battery lasts compared to max performance, but GRID was fairly playable unpluged on balanced mode, with some fairly frequent FPS drops on auto set settings.

Also why would you do serious gaming on battery power... its not like you can crave for some zombie shooting so much that you can't wait the 1hour to get to some sockets... Can't be good for the battery longevity either.

hope this helps.