After purchasing an Alienware laptop to do both Gaming and Game Development on, via a mobile platform, I have encountered an issue.
TL;DR - There is a problem with OpenGL applications running in a Window with the Nvidia GTX 860m Video Card on Alienware 17 Laptop. It does not appear to be limited to the two applications I named.
Default mode for both applications (Blender & Sketchup) appear to use the Intel HD graphics option, with OpenGL (Hardware Acceleration, henceforth H.A.) enabled. This presents a failure in two ways:
Intel HD Graphics w/H.A. enabled
Sketchup - Everything looks normal, unless you try to do something in the work space. Your actions aren't reflected in the screen, it "looks" like the application has frozen, but it hasn't. More on this in a moment.
Blender - You are presented with a Gray screen. No menus, no work space. Again, appears the application is frozen. It isn't.
In both situations, if you do something in the work space, or where the work space would be, and then move the screen, or resize it, the window will refresh and you will see the change you made appear. In this way, there seems to be a screen draw/refresh issue with OpenGL in a windowed application (OpenGL in Full screen tests work just fine, via another application by RealTech VR) No error is ever reported to the system.
Nvidia GTX 860m Graphics w/H.A. enabled
If you enter the Nvidia Control Panel, and manually set the profile for these applications to use the Nvidia graphics card, and set the performance option to "Best Performance" I am presented with the same behavior in both applications (though different from what is seen with the Intel GPU):
Nvidia High Performance
Sketchup - I get a Window with the menus and toolbars, however the work space is an entirely blank white screen. I am unable to move the screen or resize it to refresh the display, it just remains white.
Blender - I get a Window with no menus or toolbars and the screen is entirely white, moving or resizing has no effect.
I have tried different versions of drivers, from Dell and Nvidia (337.88, 340.44, 344.11) all installed with "clean install" option selected. Behavior is consistent across all drivers.
It is very frustrating to have such a high performance machine, and be unable to run applications that ran very well on my 8+ year old desktop. I even had someone from within Dell tell me to "disable hardware acceleration" within Sketchup. Yes, if you disable hardware acceleration, things work infinitely better than they do with faulty? drivers. However, you are NOT using either of the video cards to do any rendering, which means things get very laggy with even some mildly complex models on screen. This is not a valid option, not to mention it does not help with Blender (v2.72 if I recall)
Please Help.
(OS = Windows 8.1)