laptops

[Yuri Pankov]

Pete Wright wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2/16/21 10:42 AM, LuMiWa via freebsd-questions wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> I did search FreeBSD Wiki/laptops but I didn't find the answer. I like
>> to buy Thinkpad W541 or W550s (prefer W541) but I am not sure if will
>> work on FreeBSD. I want it to connect external monitor which going
>> through Nvidia graphics card which Optimus driver supposed it works on
>> FreeBSD 13. I found that installation works on W520 and 530.
> I have a different Thinkpad with Optimus graphics - a P43s.  It mostly
> works, but have been pretty underwhelmed by the hybrid graphics of
> Optimus systems.  Not just with FreeBSD, but from what I gather its
> suboptimal on Linux as well.
> 
> To get it working on FreeBSD there is an open PR* that gets things
> working, and I can drive specific apps with the Nvidia GPU (via the
> "optirun" binary).  But there is a bit of level of effort getting it to
> work until we can get this PR over the finish line since I maintain a
> branch of the ports tree to just support the diffs in this PR.
> 
> One other issue I have is with the overall design of the Optimus design,
> the GPU is used to offload processing but the display is still driven by
> the Intel i915 GPU.  Depending on your use-case this may lead to reduced
> performance.  All in all I am very happy with this thinkpad, but if I
> had a choice I would have chosen a system with dedicated Nvidia or i915
> GPU's rather than this hybrid approach.

I do not know what exactly "optimus" is, but e.g. in P51 I can select
either "hybrid graphics" (i915) or "discrete graphics" (nvidia quadro).
 With the latter, I had no issues connecting external display.