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Listing of apps which invoke the Nvidia on i5 and i7 MBPs

I and a few others here have been thinking it might be an idea to try to develop a listing of the apps that have been reported as / appear to invoke the NVidia GT330M processor on the MBP.

Rather than making this a thread for arguing about the "pros and cons" of all of this it would be helpful if people could simply list applications which they have found to do so, especially if they are ones that people might not expect to. (There are plenty of other threads where the rights and wrongs are being argued). If necessary, add a comment indicating whether the switch occurs whenever the application is used or only when particular types of use are made of it. If you come across subsequent updates of such programs which change their behaviour and allow them to operate under the Intel Integrated Graphics, or if you find particular apps DON'T provoke this behaviour in your own experience, then perhaps you could post a note about this, too.

I should also note that I am unable to personally "test" any of these, as I don't have access to an i5 or i7 MBP.

A few which have been mentioned as invoking the NVidia elsewhere, in no particular order are:

Tweetie
HyperSpaces
Skype
iWeb
iMovie
GarageBand
Parallels 5 Desktop
Microsoft Office 2004
Microsoft Office AutoUpdate daemon
RapidWeaver
PathFinder
Mathematica
Warp
Droplr
1Password
Clips
NetNewsWire
Koolclip


Cheers

Rod

MBP 13"2.26, MBP15"2.2, iMacG520"RevB , MB2CD, MBCD, ,PM5400/180 & earlier, Mac OS X (10.6.3), 7 chooks, 2 dogs, 2 daughters, 1 pear tree, 0 partridges, itinerant bats, magpie

Posted on Apr 27, 2010 8:45 PM

Reply
78 replies

Apr 27, 2010 11:50 PM in response to Shakenbake88

Thanks Shakenbake88, but if people could simply confine themselves in this thread to listing the applications that cause switching, rather than arguing the merits or otherwise, it would be great.

The idea is to use it fundamentally for information provision. Plenty of other threads where the rights and wrongs can be argued, or start one of your own.

Cheers

Rod

Apr 29, 2010 2:24 AM in response to Fortuny

Thanks Stefan,

Cody, the author of gfxcardstatus has , in fact, already posted some of his own findings in this very thread (under the name of "bitninja") and had identified some of the apps mentioned in my opening post here. It is, indeed, a very handy little app for anyone using the i5 and i7 MBPs wanting to check out their own systems with respect to this issue, and wanting to report any relevant results here. Highly recommended.

Cheers

Rod

Listing of apps which invoke the Nvidia on i5 and i7 MBPs

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