Gadgetory

for this product showcase we're gonna be taking a look at the isuzu UL 50 VF notebook featuring and media's new Optimus technology now this is the first of a handful of notebooks that include optimists who are excited to see how well it actually performs the UL 50 v is focused on Portability and battery life this is seen in the system specs with an Intel 1.3 gigahertz ulv Core 2 Duo processor it also has 4 gigabytes of memory immediacy - 10 mobile discreet graphics a 320 gig hard drive and all of the connection essentials it's powered by an 8 cell battery and weighs a little over 5 pounds and the best part it's barely over an inch thick asus has designed the notebook with smooth sleek lines and the thin LCD features an attractive brushed aluminum finish on top the inside is well laid out and looks sharp with the gloss finish they use a single bar mouse button and dotted trackpad the chiclet style keys have great response making it very comfortable to type on quick look at the sides we have all the traditional connections power input SD card reader HDMI to USB and audio on the other side d sub network connection and DVD ROM and third USB the notebook is designed with the professional in mind someone who wants something sharp and modern that is incredibly portable they need exceptional battery life but at the same time want the ability to perform the power-hungry tasks of a modern-day desktop now this may seem like quite the demanding list but a soos is done all thanks to Nvidia Optimus so before we get into testing what is Nvidia Optimus now for an in-depth description follow the link in the sidebar however here it is in a nutshell Optimus is a technology that allows a discrete graphics card in a system to operate alongside integrated graphics and here's the clincher unlike switchable graphics which require the user to enable or disable the graphics manually Optimus requires zero that's right no user interaction so that's great and all but what is the benefit that's simple you get the full benefit of a graphics card meaning gaming HD video and GPU acceleration along with far better battery life a traditional discrete graphics system has terrible battery life because the video card runs constantly Optimus lets you use low-power integrated graphics for everyday things and then the video card when and only when you need it how could this be possible well there's a few factors that allow for this to happen with Windows 7 multiple drivers can now be installed so our system recognizes both the Intel integrated and in media discrete drivers Optimus works by physically cutting off or providing power to the discrete graphics when required and because of a whole bunch of technical stuff the change is instant no flickering screen no having to flip a switch or wait it all happens in a matter of milliseconds the key thing is that Optimus operates completely independent from the integrated graphics driver so there's no relationship needed between an media and the chipset manufacturer meaning that in this case Intel can't just decide to cut off support so let's take a look at how when video optimus actually functions nvidia has included this handy little developer tool which will show us exactly when the graphics card turns on and off when it's on it's using power will pull up internet explorer here and go to the harbour connects youtube channel now YouTube utilizes flash as of 10.1 supports GPU accelerated graphics as you can see the graphics card is lay off we'll go play our video in a notice load it up graphics card is on we're accelerating pause the video had closed it down watch and off immediately off we're back using integrated graphics and lower power next we'll pull up a video transcoding program which supports NVIDIA suited technology graphics card turns on program is up and we're ready to go it really is just as quick as you're seeing it here say for instance we want to do something a little different watch an HD movie perhaps ready video is on graphics are on video is loaded and playing and we are ready to go close that down and back to low power integrated graphics over if you know you're not gonna be needing the video card the software does allow you to specify which graphics processor you want to use here you'll see we can opt to run the media player with integrated graphics now when the video loads the NVIDIA GPU will not engage the optimist system uses a profile setup to determine what should and shouldn't turn on the video card you can see under the control panel there are hundreds of different games and applications supported and NVIDIA is constantly automatically updating and downloading new profiles for you but if you do want to add specific rules for an application in this case our media player you do have the option you can select use the default global settings discreet graphics or in this case integrated graphics now when we launch our video we don't have to make any custom selections and the video will always use integrated with the demonstration done let's check out how well Optimus and the video card actually performed check this out in left 4 dead 2 with our quality settings at low medium the integrated graphics couldn't even finish the benchmark while the discrete card enabled by Optimus plays with perfectly usable frame rates in our next demo we actually got to play the whole thing with integrated at six frames per second and media graphics well completely smooth now one of the biggest benefits I see coming from this technology will be its integration into netbooks most can't play HD video or even dream of playing blu-ray and if they can they're using a chip that absolutely destroys battery life as we'll see in our blu-ray test optimist will be able to pick up the slack for video and we will be able to have absolutely flawless playback through GPU acceleration on the same note Adobe now has support for GPU acceleration with flash 10.1 so streaming 1080p video which normally would look like this now plays back perfectly smooth the other great benefit of having an media's discrete graphics on call is you get to utilize CUDA technology for applications that support it so especially in the world of video and photo editing you're not only are able to complete tasks quicker but you enhance quality as well now the most important feature for this notebook is battery life and that's what Optimus is all about for these tests we present a worst case scenario where all the wireless connections are on screen brightness is high and the battery plan is unbalanced at idle the system stays up for over nine and a half hours something unheard of with most other notebooks jumping to the bottom both gaming and HD video heavily utilize system resources and require that the discreet graphics are on a hundred percent of the time here we see battery life more in tune with what is expected from a system with a discreet card while watching regular DVD however we don't need the video card optimist doesn't kick it on and we edged out quite a bit more battery life here's where it gets interesting our general use test went through a typical day of web browsing emails image processing and over 50% of our time was spent watching YouTube when running the system with optimists allowing the computer to utilize the video card when it needed we only took a nine-minute loss to the battery throughout the entire work day and to top it off the UL 50 BF is back up and running within three hours and with that rear a proper look at Nvidia Optimus and the Isuzu L 50 VF notebook overall the unit is pretty impressive given that it's only around $800 offers exceptional battery life and has the benefit of discreet graphics to let you do just about anything asou specs their notebooks with a standard two-year global warranty which is almost unheard of for notebooks so you know they stand behind their product now as far as Nvidia Optimus Technology goes it is quite possibly the best technology to come to portable computers in recent years notebook manufacturers have fought for years to find the perfect balance between performance and battery life the two terms have really been mutually exclusive the optimist solution finally brings the two together as we see with the UL 50 VF we can have a low-power and in comparison slower performing 1.3 gigahertz CPU and yet still play games stream HD video and do all of the things of a performance PC the Optimus software is incredibly intuitive and the profile system still provides the user all the advanced controls in case they want to mess around the hardware implementation allows for perfectly seamless switching between integrated and discreet graphics so there's never an interruption really what's there not to like about it both the Isuzu L 50 VF notebook and Nvidia Optimus technology received a hardware canucks damn good seal of approval as always we encourage you to subscribe to our Channel and leave your feedback 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