Odd graphics phenomenon

[Riffraffer]

I own the newest model of the 15" non-retina MBP. Recently, I've noticed a strange occurrence. Whenever I open a game or watch a netflix video the computer screen immediately flashes to a brighter color and holds that new, brighter color scheme until I quit out of the game or video.

Perhaps it has been doing this all along but I think it just started happening. My only conclusion is that this is what happens when the graphics cards switch back and forth. What do you all think?

 

[mrsir2009]

It seems a bit strange that the graphics card would switch when you were just watching a NetFlix video - I would have thought the Intel HD 4000 would be powerful enough for that?

 

[Riffraffer]

Yeah thats a good point. I wonder if i brought it to the apple store if they would know the problem.. I'm leaning towards no.

 

[mrsir2009]

Yeah thats a good point. I wonder if i brought it to the apple store if they would know the problem.. I'm leaning towards no.

Is it bothering you that much?

 

[dusk007]

It seems a bit strange that the graphics card would switch when you were just watching a NetFlix video - I would have thought the Intel HD 4000 would be powerful enough for that?

OSX auto graphics switching has rather little to do with what GPU performance is needed. It simply switches if some program is running (even if only in the background) that uses certain frameworks which tend to be used in graphics heavy applications. OSX switches just to dedicated simple to draw a straight line across the screen or add a dimming effect if the wrong programming framework is used.

When the graphics card switch the color profile shouldn't change. It would probably also black out rather then change tone.

It seems more like some bug which relates to some color management in the app that causes that weird behavior.