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I have a question about the NVIDIA GPUs on these newer mac book pros. This one has a GT 650M, as well as the integrated intel gpu. Is it possible to separate these two gpus so that OS UI is managed by the integrated, and Octane has full use of the GT 650? At the moment looking at the demo of octane stand alone on here, I can't seem to separate them in the preferences. I tried using gfxstatus to force the laptop to use the integrated thinking I could then select the NVIDIA gpu in Octane, but it didn't show up until I set gfxstatus to use the NVIDIA gpu. Anyone have any experience with this? On my Mac Pro I can have one card drive the OS UI, and Octane can use the Titan Black I have, but on this laptop it seems a little more complicated.

Any advice would be great! Thanks.

dotcommer wrote:I have a question about the NVIDIA GPUs on these newer mac book pros. This one has a GT 650M, as well as the integrated intel gpu. Is it possible to separate these two gpus so that OS UI is managed by the integrated, and Octane has full use of the GT 650? At the moment looking at the demo of octane stand alone on here, I can't seem to separate them in the preferences. I tried using gfxstatus to force the laptop to use the integrated thinking I could then select the NVIDIA gpu in Octane, but it didn't show up until I set gfxstatus to use the NVIDIA gpu. Anyone have any experience with this? On my Mac Pro I can have one card drive the OS UI, and Octane can use the Titan Black I have, but on this laptop it seems a little more complicated.

Any advice would be great! Thanks.

Laptops work differently such that they use only one video card, either the integrated one or dedicated one, at a given time. The switching is automatic/dynamic. Perhaps the purpose of gfxstatus is mainly for conserving battery levels of the macbook pro by allowing you to control when the switch should happen. I could be wrong, but this is just based on the premise that laptops use the less-powerful gpu for non-gpu intensive tasks and then switches to the dedicated card when you launch software that requires a more powerful gpu, it implies these little ones don't use the cards simultaneously.

Yeah, i was getting that same impression. Its a shame, because the little NVIDIA card in the macbook pro isn't too bad if you could dedicate 100% of it to Octane.