For the majority of tasks, a desktop PC is no longer necessary because to the advancements made in gaming laptops over the past few years. The majority of gaming laptops include all the most recent capabilities, including desktop-class CPUs, variable refresh rate displays, and mechanical keyboards in some cases.
But in this story of new features, the most popular addition in recent years hasn’t been ray-traced graphics or high refresh rate displays; it’s been a regular addition called the MUX switch. It is a function that enables your gaming laptop to forego integrated graphics in favour of separate graphics, which can nearly immediately improve performance. Today, practically all laptop reviewers vouch for the MUX switch, calling it a requirement for any gaming laptop. However, how exactly does a MUX switch operate, and should you really look for this functionality in your next laptop purchase? In this MUX switch explainer, that is precisely the question we are attempting to address.
MUX switch for gaming laptops: explanation (2022)
The MUX switch is an interesting feature, and in this post we will examine every aspect of it, from its origins to its inner workings. We will also address a number of concerns that many PC enthusiasts may have, such as how to determine whether a laptop has a MUX switch. If so, how do you turn on the MUX switch? The goal is to inform you of all the crucial details concerning the MUX switch so that you are aware of both its advantages and disadvantages. Utilize the table of contents to get to the part that interests you if you’re seeking for specific answers.
What Does a Laptop MUX Switch Do?
We need first have a firm understanding of what the MUX switch is before examining its fascinating history. The MUX, which stands for “Multiplexer,” is nothing more than a toggle that gives consumers the option of running their laptop display through either the iGPU (also known as Optimus or hybrid mode) or the discrete GPU. The MUX switch in modern gaming laptops is an exclusive microprocessor positioned in-between the iGPU and the dGPU.
For those unfamiliar with laptop terminology, iGPU and dGPU refer to the various graphics processors that are found in your laptop. The graphics processor is known as an iGPU, and it is typically housed on the same chip as the CPU. It is a less powerful graphics chip used for fundamental activities like streaming videos, executing the OS’s graphical user interface, and other related tasks. On the other hand, the dGPU (dedicated graphics processor) is a full-featured graphics chip that is placed separately from the CPU and is capable of handling high-performance applications like gaming or video processing. Additionally, they demand differing amounts of power, with the iGPU often being a low-power chip and the dGPU being more power-hungry.
In contemporary gaming laptops, these several GPUs typically coexist side by side, switching naturally (more on this later) to provide the user with the best experience. But recently, the iGPU has begun to operate as a bottleneck for the dGPU due to the increasing graphics capability of discrete GPUs. Simply put, the contemporary MUX switch is a fix for this specific issue. The question of why this happened is one that can only be answered by considering the historical background, which is what we do in our following part.
