will have a look at the advanced setups and usage page, thanks. i had actually just come back here to post that i was 100% that it was working --- as i found an inbuilt benchmark of sorts, the glxspheres64 command. running it as default i'm getting FPS in the mid to late sixties, running optirun glxspheres64 however gets me just shy of 130fps. very nice!

all that being said, i haven't yet had any luck getting any steam games to run with it .. but i'm definitely making forward steps.
again, thank you for all your help and patience, i feel a bit like someone who hysterically calls up IT helpdesk and has their lifethreatening problems solved by being told 'try turning it off and then on again.'

f

mm ... that doesn't really work for things which don't have those 'default' names like firefox... the games i've been trying to play don't seem to have their names recognised by that.

but also - probably more importantly - that doesn't (far as i can see) tell you how to set the nvidia card to your primary, so that the computer boots with it active and uses it or *everything* --- any ideas?

I could be wrong on this...
But I (think) that you can control your Nvidia card in your BIOS.

When I installed my new ATI/AMD Radeon 7750 card on my mobo it took over the on board graphics that came with my mobo.
But my new Radeon card was not in use. As I recall, I had to go into the BIOS and set the new Radeon 7750 to PCI-e. That should set your Nvidia card to your primary.

Also I looked in the Applications Menu in Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon.
Under:Administration> Driver Management. That might provide a few functions or not?

Hope that helps-