Does this Mac have something like Optimus for switching between the Intel and NVIDIA card? Do you know if multimonitor works, connecting two monitors to each Thunderbolt port (two external monitors + integrated LCD screen). I come from an Optimus laptop, and it was a nightmare, I want to use the NVIDIA card as a primary GPU. It would be great to know if the laptop runs hot on NVIDIA and how long the battery lasts.
2 Answers
On My Macbook Pro Retina 11,3 (Late 2013)
Graphics Switching: It's somewhat different for the new Retina Macbooks. On older models if you booted in EFI, both cards would be exposed and you could use a tool like switcheroo to enable/disable one of them. Now by default if EFI does not detect an Mac operatingsystem being booted , only the Nvidia card will be exposed to your operating system as show by running lspci.
There are some grub patches to set_os to Apple to allow showing both cards, but they are not in mainline of even Ubuntu 14.04 yet.
Multi Monitor:
Nouveau: Works out of the box with Ubuntu 14.04 when using displayport, but only if I plug in the adapter before booting.
Nvidia: Works just fine.
BatteryTimeBattery indicator reported 6-7 hours for me
HotnessDoes not feel particularly hot compared to old 15" Macbook i7 Models, but I have mainly tested it with surfing
Since its still beta i will update this post as things progress.
There is no such thing as Optimus on Mac. Unlike other laptops, Mac doesn’t have a switch on the chassis which lets you turn the discrete graphics on or off. If you’ve just got the laptop, you may want to try shutting down and turning off the computer, unplugging it from the wall, and pressing the power button for a few seconds. Replace the battery with another one and see if it works. Also, make sure the Mac is fully up to date, otherwise, you can use the latest version of Disk Utility to erase the System file and repair disk permissions. You can learn how to do this by clicking here! Good luck!
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