What is graphics card switching/hybrid graphics?

[skateguy]

I was recently on askubuntu and someone mentioned graphics card switching and hybrid graphics. what exactly is it and what's the point? Can they both be used at same time? If you have a discrete gpu why would you ever want to use the integrated gpu?

 

[qwazwaz]

Hybrid graphics is running integrated and discrete in tandem, unless your gpu is awful, no point.

 

[skateguy]

Hybrid graphics is running integrated and discrete in tandem, unless your gpu is awful, no point.

I'm still unclear of the point of it. This is the answer I was reading, http://askubuntu.com/questions/161825/macbook-pro-8-2-graphics-switching-ubuntu-12-04. The person asking has a macbook pro, so I would imagine it has a decent gpu. Also why is it called switching if it runs in tandem?

 

[Cristi72]

Hello,

The switching is used in all contemporary laptops which employs both integrated and discrete GPUs, for better efficiency (the discrete GPU kicks in only when gaming or when use specific software with GPU hardware support).

The "hybrid" thing usually refers to AMD APUs (it is called "Hybrid Crossfire"), which can use an external GPU in addition to the integrated GPU (however, the list of compatible discrete GPUs is pretty short and depends on what APU is used).

If you do a lot of video rendering and you have an Intel CPU with integrated graphics, you may want to use the QuickSync feature, which is the next best thing after the video software rendering (software rendering is still giving the best quality results, but using QuickSync the rendering is blazing fast and there are little loss in image quality). If you have also a discrete GPU, the OS will use it instead, so workarounds were developed to use both GPUs. Systems using Windows has the Virtu solution, developed by Lucidlogix, which lets you use the external GPU for gaming AND internal GPU for video rendering.

In the linked article there is the term "hybrid graphics", which is inappropriate, because they just want to switch the graphics load between cards when wanted, not using both of them at the same time. The main purpose of that article is to give users a way to extend the battery life:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics

 

[skateguy]

Hello,

The switching is used in all contemporary laptops which employs both integrated and discrete GPUs, for better efficiency (the discrete GPU kicks in only when gaming or when use specific software with GPU hardware support).

The "hybrid" thing usually refers to AMD APUs (it is called "Hybrid Crossfire"), which can use an external GPU in addition to the integrated GPU (however, the list of compatible discrete GPUs is pretty short and depends on what APU is used).

If you do a lot of video rendering and you have an Intel CPU with integrated graphics, you may want to use the QuickSync feature, which is the next best thing after the video software rendering (software rendering is still giving the best quality results, but using QuickSync the rendering is blazing fast and there are little loss in image quality). If you have also a discrete GPU, the OS will use it instead, so workarounds were developed to use both GPUs. Systems using Windows has the Virtu solution, developed by Lucidlogix, which lets you use the external GPU for gaming AND internal GPU for video rendering.

In the linked article there is the term "hybrid graphics", which is inappropriate, because they just want to switch the graphics load between cards when wanted, not using both of them at the same time. The main purpose of that article is to give users a way to extend the battery life:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics

Many thanks @Cristi72 for your response, that clears things up.