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Found way to know what GPU is in use!

hockey9999 said:
I just tested it in Safari as well, with both gmail.com and my iGoogle page, both of which force the 330M to come on. It almost looks like the 330M kicks in when the chat pain in either gmail or iGoogle finishes loading. Surely discrete graphics are not necessary in this instance.

I have a lot of add-ons in Firefox, Safari is completely untouched. I never use it. I wonder if one of the "Labs" features in gmail could be causing it?

EDIT -

I just tried another gmail account that doesnt have any Labs features enabled and it still uses the 330M in both Firefox and Safari.
Click to expand...


I had this problem until I uninstalled the google voice and video chat safari plugin. After restarting the browser it now stays on the Intel all the time. Maybe that will work for you?
 
Works fine with the 15" i7 hi-res antiglare, bitninja! Thanks a lot for that!

Suggestion for a next version: a Quit option ;)
 
bitninja said:
What, you mean you don't want to have to open up the Activity Monitor to quit it? Oh...well in that case...download it again, I just updated it. :D

For reference again:
http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus.app.zip

Thanks!
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Could someone post a screenshot of what this looks like? Would like to know beforehand, should I try it out. (And admittedly I'm hesistant to install a program from a forum posting.)
 
bitninja said:
What, you mean you don't want to have to open up the Activity Monitor to quit it? Oh...well in that case...download it again, I just updated it. :D

For reference again:
http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus.app.zip

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Sounds like a great little app, but I already have a little to many things in my menu bar... I have no idea how you made this app, but do you think it would be possible to get this info in Geektool? i.e. is there some easy osascript or something that will give this result?

Hope my question isn't to annoying...
 
From terminal, >> system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType

Shows the same information. It would be fairly trivial to write an app to query this every "X" seconds and flip an icon to indicate which GPU is in use.

Skype was running down my battery it turns out.
 
bitninja said:
Good to know! If you find an icon that you'd like in the text's place I'll gladly drop it in.
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Just did a quick search for 'intel' and 'nvidia' on google, looking for 16x16 images. How about these?

favicons.ico
recommendedwhite.png
 
Redbookpro said:
From terminal, >> system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType

Shows the same information. It would be fairly trivial to write an app to query this every "X" seconds and flip an icon to indicate which GPU is in use.

Skype was running down my battery it turns out.
Click to expand...

You don't have any idea how to just get it to output either GPU?
 
Libertine Lush said:
Could someone post a screenshot of what this looks like? Would like to know beforehand, should I try it out. (And admittedly I'm hesistant to install a program from a forum posting.)
Click to expand...

Understandable! Here:

gfxCardStatus.png


andrewfee said:
Just did a quick search for 'intel' and 'nvidia' on google, looking for 16x16 images. How about these?
Click to expand...

Thanks, maybe I'll throw those in there!

redbookpro said:
From terminal, >> system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType

Shows the same information. It would be fairly trivial to write an app to query this every "X" seconds and flip an icon to indicate which GPU is in use.

Skype was running down my battery it turns out.
Click to expand...

Yep, you nailed it - my app just parses the output from that and determines whether or not the integrated Intel chipset has a display connected or not, but it does it on application launch and terminate. So any app you launch or quit will trigger a status update.

RexGalore said:
Sounds like a great little app, but I already have a little to many things in my menu bar... I have no idea how you made this app, but do you think it would be possible to get this info in Geektool? i.e. is there some easy osascript or something that will give this result?

Hope my question isn't to annoying...
Click to expand...

Sure, "system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType" in a terminal like redbookpro said above. As far as I know, you can't get it to output just either GPU's information. That would have been handy when I was making the app. :D
 
bitninja said:
Sure, "system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType" in a terminal like redbookpro said above. As far as I know, you can't get it to output just either GPU's information. That would have been handy when I was making the app. :D
Click to expand...

Dang! Would have guessed, but had to ask.

Really would have liked to have it in geektools...

Thanks for answering though! :)
 
RexGalore said:
Dang! Would have guessed, but had to ask.

Really would have liked to have it in geektools...

Thanks for answering though! :)
Click to expand...

No problem. Sorry I couldn't be of more assistance! Maybe I could write a terminal app that just outputs whichever display you want...then you could use it in Geektools. That wouldn't be too difficult considering I already have the parsing of all of the output from the command I'm using done. I'll get back to you. :D
 
Took me a while to figure out what was keeping the Nvidia on. Eventually, I was like, "It... couldn't possibly be Bento 2, could it?" It could.
 
Looks great. If you change the text to some neat logo's or icons, I will definitely use it
 
bitninja said:
Yep, you nailed it - my app just parses the output from that and determines whether or not the integrated Intel chipset has a display connected or not, but it does it on application launch and terminate. So any app you launch or quit will trigger a status update.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the app, good stuff. Does it (yet) update on whatever else we know triggers the switch, like plugging in an external display?
 
awesome

i've been waiting for somebody to write an app like this. i was going to attempt it at the weekend but you've beat me to it!

as previously mentioned, swap the text for icons and i'll happily add it to my login items :D
 
He might get into some legal problems with using Intel and NVidia logos, so he may want to avoid that route altogether
 
guitarfreak846 said:
I'm LOLing at my i7 MBP pulling up 330m to run an NES EMULATOR!!!! LOL
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Hahahahahaah!!

Damn, now I don't want to buy a 15 inch i7 anymore. Guess I'll wait untill Apple comes with a software fix because I'm going to be using it on the road and battery life is important to me. ( it's the only reason why I want a MBP to be honest :p )

Or I simply go for a cheapo 13 MBP I suppose, sell it at the next update and buy an i7 then.:(
 
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