Thread: Display adaptor confusion

These machines 'hot' switch the display adaptor depending upon the application being used. For applications just requiring low graphics grunt it will use the intel graphics chip to save power - hence when you right click on the desktop you see properties for the intel graphics chip.

When you fire up an application which requires serious graphics power the GT540M comes into play at the cost of increased power consumption.

I think it is up to application in use to request which graphics processor it needs to use but there is a setting somewhere which you can change to configure which graphics card to use and when, ie an 'auto' setting and a 'manual' setting. When in 'auto' the application controls which graphics card to use, when in manual you control which graphics card to use ~ something like that.

There should also be a little light on the key board to indicate to you which graphics card is currently active.

CS5 should be using the NVIDA card so if it is crashing maybe the graphics processor is not switching from intel to NVIDA correctly or maybe you have inadvertently disabled the 'hot' switching setting.

My son has one of these machines, I don't regularly use it so I working a bit from memory about how it all hangs together.

you using a Microsoft driver got the gt540 or the amd driver?

there were some buggey version of the driver around that were giving that sort of error.

go here and download the latest

Drivers - GeForce

What Inc has said Plus I'd also reset Photoshop's preferences and see if that fixes your other issue.
To do this:
Windows: hold the Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys down and click on Photoshop
Mac: hold Cmd+Opt+Shift keys down and click on Photoshop
You will be prompted about reseting the preferences.

Thanks guys.

Ferret, what you've said make sense. I'll go looking for the "switch".

Dave, I downloaded the latest driver from Asus but when I followed your link and did the auto discover it came up with a different rev driver. I'll install it and see what happens.

Derek, I reset preferences, disabled OpenGL and other things. In the end I did a new install and still have the problem.

Dave, you're a genius. Installed the driver and all is good.

Ferret, I found the GPU light on the keyboard. It's supposed be white for Discrete GPU and blue for On-board GPU. It's permanently off and the manual is gives no other instructions. More searching for me!

Originally Posted by WhiteD3

Ferret, what you've said make sense. I'll go looking for the "switch".

I'm pretty sure the 'switch' is on the NVIDA control panel. If CS5 is not using the 540M you may have to manually add it to a list of applications which is supposed to use the 540m when CS5 starts.

Again, I don't have my sons machine in front of me to confirm everything exactly but this is my memory of how things work.

There are many stories on the internet about the operation (or non operation) of the 540M and I do remember there was some initial doubt on my sons machine that the 540M was actually coming into play when it should but after a few hours of trying different things out we were happy all operated as it was supposed to and has been trouble free since we first bought the machine back in Dec2011.

There are also reports on the internet of difficulties of get CS5 to operate with video card acceleration (CUDA etc.) but I'll leave you to follow those up. I don't use photoshop so have no direct experience with it but if you look around google with the words "CS5, CUDA and enable' you will find CS5 supposedly needs some tweaks to take advantage of what the GT540M has to offer - see Video Cards for Adobe Premiere CS6, CS5.5 and CS5 for example, and in particular the section titled Special Notes for Laptop Owners in this article which will guide you through setup of the 540M.

This maybe why CS5 is not is not automatically making use of the 540M - it does not actually make any requests to use accelerated graphics functions so the 540M never comes into play.