Laptop: Which dedicated graphic card works with VVVV?

vvvv beta question
1

hi all!

I need a portable laptop for Graphics, VVVV, Unity and Oculus.

I read some folks are having problems with nvidia optimus, as some applications will just run on the internal CPU graphics. So who is using an optimus laptop? What does work, what does not?

The alternative would be an ur-teuer Macbook with R9 M370. Anybode using one of these? No problems there?

Cheers

2

Hi schlonzo!

I haven’t experienced any problems with nvidia optimus lately. For the Oculus they just released the “first officially supported mobile gpu for vr” http://www.notebookcheck.com/Nvidia-Quadro-M5500-VR-auf-mobilen-Workstations-rueckt-naeher.163285.0.html
But that might be an overkill…

3

no problem with optimus or anything else here either. Nvidia GTX 970M in a gigabyte P34W laptop, highly recommended…

4

the only problems with modern laptops is crap oculus driver

5

I had a lot of optimus problems with dx9, not with dx11 tho. otherwise i’d have look at the Schenker Laptops, they have some without optimus.

6

If you are on DX11, the put /dx11mode:nvidia in args.txt to try to force to use the nice GPU if you have trouble.

Can’t really figure out if this is still relevant so I just do it anyway, perhaps @vux can shed somelight on this

7

I’ve been using a Sager (aka Clevo) i7 with dual GTX870Ms in SLI (see below) for a while now, and it kicks serious butt. “Portable” is a relative term though, as this thing is heavy, the power brick is about the size and weight of a regular PC power supply, and battery life is about 50 minutes when the system is loaded.

I have had mixed results with the Rift depending on which SDK version; some of them have worked perfectly, some with micro-stutter (0.6.0.1 is the sweet spot for the DK2 and vvvv). I have not tried the released version yet. All the Unity and Unreal demos run flawlessly on it.

Unbelievably there are notebooks out with a REAL GTX980 in them, but they ain’t cheap.

A note about SLI: at least on the systems I’ve seen, that doesn’t really buy you much as that may only work on the main laptop display, not an attached display like a Rift. You may be able to set the main display to the outboard display though and get it to work that way, but it’s a hassle.