  We study the problem of efficient integration of variational equations in
multi-dimensional Hamiltonian systems. For this purpose, we consider a
Runge-Kutta-type integrator, a Taylor series expansion method and the so-called
`Tangent Map' (TM) technique based on symplectic integration schemes, and apply
them to the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam $\beta$ (FPU-$\beta$) lattice of $N$ nonlinearly
coupled oscillators, with $N$ ranging from 4 to 20. The fast and accurate
reproduction of well-known behaviors of the Generalized Alignment Index (GALI)
chaos detection technique is used as an indicator for the efficiency of the
tested integration schemes. Implementing the TM technique--which shows the best
performance among the tested algorithms--and exploiting the advantages of the
GALI method, we successfully trace the location of low-dimensional tori.
