Okay... ...To update... ...To make optimus work properly for all software, use only a global profile. Se the optimus value to enabled. This will use your discreet card almost always. Only a few programs will reject it, mostly really old games that intel can run really well anyway. If you want to get most of those working on your discreet card, try setting the opengl renderer to the oddity value (it should have some symbols in it, but it points to your card; if you have many cards, you'll see several of these, just pick the first odd value, not automatic). This will force most opengl to be rendered on the discreet card. Older versions of your adobe suite will also make use of this value. Some things will render faster.
The goal of Optimus was to give resources back to the user, not take them away. I think I'm getting the idea, as my system monitors are showing it.
The Intel Graphics layer controls the screen, but gets info from your gfx card. Nothing new there... ...But, instead of holding the rendered screen in the GFX card, it's held in your shared GFX ram (which is just system ram dedicated to the intel layer). While this presents more system overhead, it allows your gfx card to have access to all it's ram and resources for calculations. This raises frame rates, as the rendered frames go to system ram while new ones are being built. For gaming, this is only a slight bump. But for graphics work and game building, this is a huge bump for more intense tasks.
I turned off optimus in the global profile and only the intel card was used by all apps. They all worked, but very slowly.the intel layer starts at 128mb of vram and it grows to 2gb as needed (my model only, newer ones will get up to 4gb according to white pages on the latest core i7 quad, but i5 and lower get 1gb). When the intel card is the only one used, it takes a while to expand the 128mb when it becomes necessary, and it also takes up a whole core of processor, slowing all ops down.
I turned it back on, and both cards were being used. But the intel only showed a small amount of memory use, and intermittent processing use. It waits for changes and puts them to the screen. The nvidia card assumed the rendering of the data.
It all works. Grab the sofware from the link for windows 10 and nvidia. I haven't found anything for mac yet, but I did look around. It's been a while, so I couldn't tell you if they've fixed much in mac graphics since they dropped nvidia support. Other processors do allow you to set some of this in their software. Mac calls it IRIS. Windows calls it Optimus. Same purpose.
If you are on mac, you may be out of luck here, but you can use lemon laws to have them replace it with a model that's useable, one with a non nvidia discreet card. Nvidia and Mac do not go well together.
My system monitors do show that Nvidia optimus dlls are being used now. Before, only the system 32 dlls were being used. Same file names, fewer of them. The Nvidia variant is either an extension of the windows files or a copy of them with extensions. I cannot tell, I didn't build them, but when they are used, my nvidia monitor in the tray shows it, as well as memory and processing monitoring. 12 restarts, closing and opening, it all still works.
Just remember to check if you have an external video port and read up on which processor handles it. I have 2. One is handled by intel, other by nvidia, An alternate way to check if the software will load... ...push your main monitor through the external, with an extended screen on your first screen. Load an app. See if it will work. If it does, you know your graphics setup is to blame, and you can start checking into what you've got. I'll try and help, but I won't promise miracles, only some info if I can find it.
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