nVidia Optimus

Just today I got a new laptop, an Alienware m11x. Pretty excited about it, and I've finally gotten around to getting it mostly setup, installed all the Windows updates, etc. After getting the basics setup, the first thing I did was install City of Heroes, to see how well it runs on it.

For some reason, however, City of Heroes is greying out any of the advanced graphics options...I can't enable ultra mode, I can't use anything other than the lowest shadow settings, I can't use anything more than the basic water settings. I've tried to find out if anyone else has had this issue, but I haven't found any other posts about this.

The issue, I think, is that City of Heroes is detecting that I have an Intel graphics card, rather than an nVidia graphics card, and thus it is presenting me with the list of supported options for the Intel card. Essentially, Optimus isn't working the way its supposed to.

Does anyone who has this laptop or a laptop with Optimus technology have similar issues, or am I alone in this?

I'm currently attempting to install other games to see if I can get them detect the nVidia card properly, but that won't help me get City of Heroes working properly.

I have manually white listed both the City of Heroes and City of Heroes Updater executables in my nVidia drivers to run on the nVidia card, and that hasn't helped. When running CoH Helper, no matter what I do, it detects the Intel graphics card, and not the nVidia one.

unfortunately your best bet on this is going to be over on Nzone: http://forums.nvidia.com/

As of right now, this is what Nvidia's own forums returns on CoH and Optimus:

Yeah, I'll have to register and post there as well, it can't hurt. That said, I installed Starcraft 2 and tried that, and it detected my nVidia card properly, as did EVE Online and several Steam games. So it seems this problem is limited to City of Heroes only. =\

Is there some way to force CoH to use the nVidia card?

Running into the same issue myself. City of Heroes is clearly using the NVidia graphics card (if I force it to use the Intel graphics even the character select screen has a noticeably lower quality, plus in-game I get very good framerates), it just doesn't realize it.

Hmm. Would going into the registry entry for CoH and manually setting your graphics options hold up?

I am having this same exact problem years later? I just got a brand new Alienware M17xR3 and I can't set the ultra mode graphics options. Is there no fix?

Are your graphics drivers up-to-date?

Yes the drivers are all up to date. The game is using the nvidia gpu it just doesn't recognize that it is. I have the same exact problem as Ghostveil describes it. There is nothing wrong with the optimus kicking it over to the gpu, the problem is the game being able to recognize that it is

I am also having this problem. I have a new Dell XPS 17 laptop with an Intel i5 CPU and an Nvidia GT 435M GPU. I have Windows 7 64-bit on this system.

I have confirmed the Nvidia GPU is active and processing the City of Heroes graphics. The problem is that City of Heroes does not seem to recognize that the Nvidia GPU is present, and can only "see" the Intel i5 graphics processor. As a result, most of the graphics options are grayed out. Another side effect of this is that I cannot enable PhysX processing, despite the fact that my system supports it. Forcing the CoH executable to use the Nvidia GPU in the Nvidia driver setup did not change anything.

I tried completely removing and reinstalling the game, but that didn't work. It did show something odd regarding whatever method is being used to detect system hardware. At the very end of the install, I received a prompt saying something to the effect of "Your system supports Ultra Mode. Do you wish to enable it?" Even though I answered "Yes", I still ended up with the same problem. This does suggest that the installation program is using a different method than the City of Heroes executable to detect system hardware, and does not have the same problem with Nvidia Optimus technology.

Can you disable the intel graphics in bios?

What version of the Nvidia driver are you using?

We are aware of the NVidia Optimus problems and a fix is on the way. But, I can't say for certain when that fix will be available.

The problem is with the game, not drivers. Though it would not hurt to make sure you are using recent drivers.

I've been thinking about getting an m11x. Does that that laptop with the optimus not currently run CoH? If so, I will hold off on making a purchase.

I just did a little reading on the Nvidia Optimus.

It seems it is the same fusion/hybrid technology they came out with and abandoned a few years ago.

The intel graphics are supposed to take care of 2d/basic graphics at a much lower cost in energy giving a longer battery life.

When 3d graphics are engaged then the hardware is supposed to switch rendering to the much more powerful and capable nvidia silicon.

Just as a random thought, have you tried using both the new and old launchers? I am guessing what is happening is the launcher is a 2d app that hands over to a 3d app and things are quite getting the need to switch from intel to nvidia.

I wonder if there is a way to flag the launcher as 3d or to create a 3d app to do the launching?

Nvidia info: http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1265444450529.html

Thread re: optimus not working for game X :http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=189894

In reading the above thread there seems to be an nvidia supplied tool (probably part of the driver package, check the nvidia control panel) for which you can list a given .exe to be forced into 3d mode.

This is not a launcher issue. You should be able to run the game in safe-mode but with minimal graphics features. Once the fix goes live, the game should be able to properly use your NVidia GPU's capabilities.

In fact, I think the training room/test server may already have the fix.

EDIT: I was mistaken. The training room/test server does not have the fix.

The changes to support Optimus technology are live with Issue 20. Please let us know if this resolves your problems or if issues remain.

Thank you for reporting this situation.

-GPU