Balancing laptop battery life and graphical performance in new way

Laptops have historically been designed around a balance of performance and portability. Not only do they need to be capable of handling the tasks they are designed for, they need to do so without destroying battery life in the process.

There are always exceptions to this rule. Big, power hungry desktop replacements are almost always designed to be tethered to a power outlet, while more portable laptops often lose out in the graphics department.

Modern graphics chips are usually more complex than CPUs. This adds not only extra power drain but also heat issues. This extra heat is actually the reason why a lot of manufacturers push the term notebook over laptop - having two massively complex chips running all the time means that the form factor is not ideal to use on one's lap.

Trading off between battery and graphical grunt

This has led to a quandary. Integrated graphics hardware is fine for the majority of desktop tasks. It is also a lot less complex, which means it can run at lower clock speeds and generates less heat. Throw on a high definition video, or try and run a 3D game and integrated graphics struggles.

On the flipside, a GPU is overkill for most day to day tasks. Web surfing and PowerPoint presentations aren't graphically intensive, and using a discrete GPU for this just adds extra power and heat drain to a laptop.

There have been many stabs at solutions to this over the years. We have seen discrete GPUs used instead of integrated graphics, but this only exacerbated the problems mentioned above. The industry then moved towards switchable graphics options, where both integrated and discrete graphics were built into the laptop.