[clug] Modern laptops, nVidia, Optimus and Linux

[Hugh Fisher]

David Austin wrote:
> I think you've made my point for me with the last parts of both
> paragraphs.  Yes, for number crunching and (high end) games
> the CPU <-> GPU bandwidth is high (though I wonder how
> many games saturate PCIe).  But for the vast majority
> of uses this is not the case.

and Alex Satrapa wrote:
> IIRC, AGP was only about 0.5Gbps bandwidth, PCIe x1 is about 4Gbps.
Based on those dodgy figures, you should be able to run several AGPx2 or
x4-style external graphics cards per Thunderbolt port. If you're not
running high demand services (e.g.: you're just expanding someone's GIS
desktop), I don't see that you'd really need that much bandwidth. I
don't see that piping OpenGL commands and textures over the bus will use
much bandwidth when all you're doing is GIS, web browsing and word
processing.

True, but this is where rational thinking collides with human
nature. The vast majority of users may never actually need
that kind of bandwidth, but they think they *might* one day.

Same reason that electric car manufacturers have to build
cars that can reach 150km/hour, or drive from Perth to Alice
Springs without recharging, even though almost nobody ever
needs to.

"Unable to play Portal 2" (or whatever the hit high-end graphical
game of the moment is) won't sell.

	cheers,
	Hugh