New MacBook Pros Make Poor Graphics Switching Decisions?

The new MacBook Pro may be turning on the power hungry NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M discrete chipset at incorrect times, according to a new Engadget report.

Apple's switching technology looks at how an application is built. Depending on which core OS X technologies its planning on using Apple switches on and off the discrete GPU accordingly.

Unfortunately, the site has found this to function poorly in some situations.


Photoshop and iMovie use the discrete GPU but strangely Lightroom 3 beta 2 does not. iPhoto '09 also uses the NVIDIA but they find it strange for such a "consumery" app. Viewing QuickTime movie trailers on Apple's site in Chrome reportedly bumps you up to discrete, but doesn't bump you back down after you're done. Firefox and Safari keep you on integrated graphics the whole time. While Tweetie, the little applet the sends a Growl notification every once in a while, actives the discrete graphics.

The site is suggesting that Apple create a disable button for discrete graphics allowing users to better manage their system and save battery life in the process.

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