Aspire V3, NVIDIA Optimus and HDMI

I'm about to buy an Aspire V3-572 with a discrete NVIDIA Geforce video card as well as the integrated Intel HD 5500. This laptop has the NVIDIA Optimus tech, which turns the Geforce card on or off depending on what programs are running (ie it turns the card on if a game or HD video is being played).

However, some other brands of laptop (specifically ASUS) have the HDMI port linked directly to the Geforce card. So if you plug in an external monitor or TV into the HDMI port, the Geforce card will power up regardless of what progams are running - and start draining the laptop battery pretty harshly, even if you're just using a web browser and not a fancy game.

Can anyone with a V3 verify if the same thing happens with their laptop? IE if you plug in an external display into the HDMI port, does the discrete card power on or will it happily continue with just the integrated Intel graphics?

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-Justin

newguy,

My understanding is that you can manually set the integrated graphics to run on certain programs, or all, or have the discreet video chipset do so. I am not aware of our notebooks overriding and turning on the video chipset by plugging something in, it should use the NVidia settings.

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