Saturday, September 25, 2010

How to Monitor and Control Apple Graphic Switching Capabilities on late 2008/2009 Macbook Pro or 2010 i5 and i7 Macbook Pros

I was curious in knowing when Mac OS X was switching between the Intel HD Graphics and the Nvidia 330M.  After a short google search I discovered an application that gives fine grained control over the graphic switching operation. Cody Krieger's gfxCardStatus is an open source menu bar application that keeps track of which graphic card your dual-GPU Macbook Pro is using and which application is using it.  It uses a simple menu bar icon to indicate which graphic processor is in use, and allows you to manually switch between the two on demand.

For anyone interested in more control over their graphics options than the simple check box "Automatic graphic switching" provided in "System Preference Energy Saver", than download this application and take control of your Macbook Pro's graphics.