Laptops Does Inspiron 14R has Switchable GPU?

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bhupatib

Disciple
A friend is going to buy a new laptop. He's a portability junkie and values battery life but also doesn't want to compromise on some casual gaming.
I suggested the new 2nd Gen Inspiron 14R and it seems perfect but there's a little doubt about whether he'd be able to switch off the GPU (Radeon 6470M) when not in need and save some juice.
Google didn't help, so can anyone confirm whether there's any option to manually switch to HD3000 IGP?
Also just out of curiosity, are these graphics switching abilities card specific as some setting in the Catalyst driver or something proprietary that manufacturers deploy?
 
Graphics switching has to be enabled by the manufacturers & not by the OEMs (AMD, in this case). I'm not sure but I feel that the GPU is not switchable.
 
Hmm..I guess it's not switchable after all, if it was then Dell wouldn't have fail to advertise.
BUT -
1. I heard there was a 'power saving' option in the latest Catalyst driver which can 'turn off' the gpu when in battery mode (?)

2. What about 'Lucid Universal' GPU virtulisation driver? It allows one to use both IGP and dGPU depending on the graphics demand of the system (2D/media encoding Vs 3D games/renders) and it's just been launced for SB notebooks...

Lucid Brings Virtu Universal Technology To Notebooks, Intel And AMD Desktops
Lucidlogix virtu

Sandy bridge's media encoding ability has been confirmed to be the best among Nvidia Cuda and ATI's Stream plus the huge power saving benefits from an IGP is undeniable, making Virtu, if we can run it on 'any' SB notebook, an ideal solution.
Or maybe I'm just being paranoid about this whole power saving thingy! BTW how much impact does an 'always active' GPU have on the battery life anyways?

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

UPDATE - It does.
Here's what dell says about the new Inspiron R laptops in its PR (of all the places!) -

Smart, powerful graphics: Boost visual performance with optional intelligent graphics. Upgraded Inspiron R laptops use high-performance video cards for graphics-intensive applications, like playing games or watching HD movies. When you need less power, your laptop automatically switches to an integrated card — delivering more performance on a single battery charge.
Click to expand...

The ''optional'' part might indicate that this feature will be available with 15R only (Nvidia Optimus) or maybe just indicating that a discrete GPU is optional. Still it's weird that Dell choose to promote silly switchable 'lids' instead of this!
Anyways, the rule here is that if your laptop supports switchable graphics it'll have under Device Manager -> Display Adapter, listed both Intel and Discrete Graphics. So some of the new owners can confirm this.
This will also mean that driver update will come from Dell only. So one might expect delays.

Also the Virtu Universal driver, although making the whole switchable thing vendor and hardware independant, has a catch - the notebook's display must be connected to the HD3000 and the software will 'virtualize' the GPU when needed. But currently all notebooks (with SB+dGPU setup) have video out from the dGPU...sad.

Anyways I've given my friend the green light for the purchase. :)
 
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