In recent years, gaming laptops have become so advanced that you no longer need a desktop PC for most workloads. Most gaming laptops come with all the latest features like variable refresh rate screens, desktop class processors, and some even come with a mechanical keyboard. In this tale of new features, however, the most talked-about addition in recent years has not been high-refresh-rate displays or ray-traced graphics, but a common addition known as the MUX switch. It's a feature that gives your gaming laptop the ability to bypass integrated graphics and use discrete graphics to deliver performance benefits almost instantly. Today, almost every computer reviewer swears by it and calls the MUX switch a must-have feature in any gaming laptop. But how does a MUX switch work, and should you actually be looking for this feature in your next laptop purchase? That's exactly what we're here to answer in this MUX switch explanation.

In this article, we will explore every aspect of the fascinating feature that is the MUX switch – from its history to its inner workings. We will also answer a variety of questions that many PC enthusiasts may have, such as how can you tell if your laptop has a MUX switch? And if it does, how do you enable the MUX switch? The idea is to give you all the important facts about the MUX switch, so that you know its advantages and limitations. If you are looking for specific answers, use the table of contents to go to the section that interests you.

Before we look at the fascinating history of the MUX switch, we should first have a clear idea of what it is. Short for "Multiplexer", MUX is nothing more than a switch that allows users to choose to drive their laptop display either through the iGPU (also called Optimus or hybrid mode) or through the discrete GPU. In current gaming laptops, the MUX switch takes the form of a dedicated microchip placed between the iGPU and the dGPU.

Now for people who are not well versed in laptop nomenclature, iGPU and dGPU refer to the different graphics processors that are in your laptop. The iGPU is the graphics processor that is usually located on the same board as the processor. It is a weaker graphics chip that is used for basic tasks such as video streaming, running the operating system's GUI, and other similar tasks. dGPU (dedicated graphics processor), on the other hand, is a full-fledged graphics chip (installed separately from the processor) that can perform high-performance tasks such as gaming or video rendering. They also have different power requirements, with the iGPU typically being a low-power chip, while the dGPU is more power-hungry.