If you own a notebook, the one of the many challenges has always been to balance battery life with laptop performance. With Nvidia’s announcement of the Optimus graphics technology, this balancing act may just have become a bit easier and automated.

What this new technology does is offer seemless, automatic switching between an Nvidia discrete graphics card and an integrated video card that runs with the CPU. This means that when you are using your laptop for 3D games, video or for other functions that require more high end graphics functionality, the discrete graphics card will kick in to function. In contrary, when the laptop is being used in situations that have a lower graphical requirement, the Optimus technology will adjust and switch from the high power discrete graphics card to the low power integrated graphics chip. Situations that would cause the change to the low power graphics chip include reading and writing emails, general internet browsing and working in a word processor.

Switchable graphics technology for laptops has been around for some time now and is commonly found on laptops by a variety of manufacturers including Apple, Sony and Asus. However, the technology on many laptops has not always been the most user friendly often requiring the user logout or reboot their machine to engage the change. This is not the case with Optimus with is automatic and behind the scenes switching.

Nvidia goes to far as to make the comparison that their new technology can be likened to a hybrid car that runs on electrical power or fuel depending upon the situation.

Asus computers is one of the first manufacturers to include Nvidia Optimus within their new U30JC which will retail for $869.

Via: Information Week