Optimus XI button to left of power button

[daveeb]

Hi all
I was just wondering what the button to the left of the power button does. It looks like some kind of turbo button judging by the speedo graphic but i'm wondering what it "turbos". It's currently lit orange. Im guessing it's a feature for gaming ?? for the graphics card but would really like to know what it does and when, if ever, you would need to use it.
I know the obvious answer is press it and see but i'd rather have some wise words from here first.
Thankyou

 

[Neumie]

It's the turbo button as you suspected. The Optimus XI has 3 modes: office mode, gaming mode and turbo mode. By default i think it runs in gaming mode (Should be sorta half lit up).
Office mode saves some power and uses the fans less.
Gaming mode lets all the hardware work harder for more performance at the expense of some battery life.
Turbo mode has the laptop go all out. I think this only works when the laptop is plugged in.

In your taskbar you should see a small blue-ish icon with what looks like a fan. It's called the gaming centerU. This gives you more control over these modes. But that turbo button just gives you a quick way to switch between the above 3 modes.

 

[daveeb]

Thanks Neumie, yes I had to find gaming centre to change my keyboard colour scheme, it was called control centre previously which temporarily confused me coming from a six plus year old machine.

Is nvidia Optimus not a thing anymore ?, my old Vortex laptop automatically switches to the GPU for gaming and ramps up the fans when needed.

 

[daveeb]

Thanks Neumie, yes I had to find gaming centre to change my keyboard colour scheme, it was called control centre previously which temporarily confused me coming from a six plus year old machine.

Is nvidia Optimus not a thing anymore ?, my old Vortex laptop automatically switches to the GPU for gaming and ramps up the fans when needed.

Bump..
Reading this over I realise that the nvidia optimus comment is a bit irrelevant. What I meant to ask was why is there a turbo control (for the fans) when my 6+ year old pc will automatically ramp up the fans when required without user intervention so presumably my latest one will do that automatically as well.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Bump..
Reading this over I realise that the nvidia optimus comment is a bit irrelevant. What I meant to ask was why is there a turbo control (for the fans) when my 6+ year old pc will automatically ramp up the fans when required without user intervention so presumably my latest one will do that automatically as well.

The Optimus is a very budget chassis, it’s just that it’s a manual feature on that one.

Although saying that it does appear to be more the case on this generation os chassis than ever before so maybe there is another reason for it, but I couldn’t say what that is I’m afraid.

 

[daveeb]

OK thanks Spydertracks, i'm fine with that if that's how it works. It's no big hassle to turn it up when I see the temperatures rise.

 

[FerrariVie]

Bump..
Reading this over I realise that the nvidia optimus comment is a bit irrelevant. What I meant to ask was why is there a turbo control (for the fans) when my 6+ year old pc will automatically ramp up the fans when required without user intervention so presumably my latest one will do that automatically as well.

The button will actually switch profiles on Control/Gaming Center (I never know how it's called), so it can change between underclock, overclock and default, while tunning the fans accordingly. The fans will always ramp up and down automatically, but their lower and upper limits will be different depending on the profile.