dual graphics cards problem

I have a lenovo y570 with an integrated intel graphics card and an nvidia gt555m the problem is that the nnly graphics card ubuntu will use is the integrated one. I have the Nvidia drivers installed. I ran lspci and i got this.
               00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)

and

              01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 555M] (rev a1)
so ubuntu acknowledges the exsitence of both graphics cards but uses the intel one I checked my drivers in jockey and loo and behold it says that the nvidia driver is activated but not currently in use
I figured this would be easy to fix by just changing the default gpu I did some light googleing and I found a program called switcheroo which allows you to switch graphics cards in ubuntu sadly it doesn't work with thr proprietry drivers just the open source neuveo ones which I'm sad to say make my nvidia graphics card as good as my integrated one. so what I'm asking here is if there is a way to permanantly change the default gpu from grub or bios or any other software.
Also in case anybody needs to know my edriver version for my nvidia card is. it is
          nvidia-current 295.40-0ubuntu1.2
according to the software center.
thanks in advance for any answers.