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Graphics card issues - can only use onboard gfx

Patricide

First of all, I'll mention that I have read a lot of threads on here already, googled the hell out of the issue and I'm still nowhere close to figuring it out. Boards has never failed me in the past though, so I'm hoping someone here has some fresh ideas for me.

I have a PC Specialist laptop, with an Nvidia GTX 660m graphics card. Recently I have actually started to use the HDMI out to connect to my TV, but I noticed the playback was quite choppy(as if the source video was missing frames).

The first thing I did was to update my driver via videos website - no change.

Second thing I did was to check the device manager. GTX660M is there with no problems.

Third thing I did was have a look through all the display options to see if I was missing anything. When I clicked on the screen resolution tab and then advanced settings I noticed that the onboard graphics was listed - not the GTX660M.

After about an hour of troubleshooting I found out that my graphics card has Nvidia's optimus power saving technology, where the graphics card is only meant to kick in during more intensive workloads(like gaming etc.). This lead me to believe that my gfx card is not being used for playing files on VLC or WMP. I also doubt it is running even when I'm playing games as I get a horrible framerate even at medium when playing Skyrim(no mods).

So I read on another forum that I should be able to manually select when Optimums kicks in via the nvidia control panel but despite changing the global settings as well as the settings for VLC itself there was no change.

No big deal I thought, I'll just disable the onboard graphics in device manager and use the GTX all the time, but this didn't work. What's more, it caused my it to slow to a crawl and while the onboard graphics were disabled I could not check the windows experience index. I tried deleting the older log files and disabling my antivirus but to no avail.

So basically, what gives here? Why won't my laptop use the card to its potential? Is there a way to enable the card fulltime? I have heard that there is a way to disable the onboard graphics in the bios but I don't see this option on mine.

Is my laptop doomed?

Edit - I should also mention that when I have the "projector only" option enabled when watching something on my tv, files play normally(without the "missing" frames).

Edit - Some pictures: http://imgur.com/a/Iq9V0

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Comments

Patricide

sugarman wrote: »

Sounds like youre selecting the video out through windows / the onboard.

If you have the correct drivers/nvidia software, there should be an option for a nvidia control panel somewhere.

If you rightclick on the desktop, do you see nvidia properties of any sort?

Yeah I have already tried that. It made no difference to me unfortunately.

When I rightclick I just get a link to the nvidia control panel.

Patricide

sugarman wrote: »

Sounds like youre selecting the video out through windows / the onboard.

If you have the correct drivers/nvidia software, there should be an option for a nvidia control panel somewhere.

If you rightclick on the desktop, do you see nvidia properties of any sort?

Yeah I have already tried that. It made no difference to me unfortunately.

When I rightclick I just get a link to the nvidia control panel.

grindle

I have a laptop with Optimus as well, you can make the discrete GPU the default in the BIOS. Small battery hit when not plugged in but saves on the headache.

Patricide

grindle wrote: »

I have a laptop with Optimus as well, you can make the discrete GPU the default in the BIOS. Small battery hit when not plugged in but saves on the headache.

Unfortunately I cant seem to find any graphics option in the bios

. I hoped that maybe there would be a secret or discreet bios menu that was otherwise locked but google it turning up nothing

TerrorFirmer

There's the option in Optimus Control Panel that you can assign the dedicated GPU to automatically handle specific games. So you can, for example, set "Skyrim.exe" to "Use Nvidia GPU".

With regards Skyrim, if it was running on the Intel card, it would be running at about 10 frames a second on medium settings - so it should be instantly obvious which card is being used, it would be a literal slideshow and completely unplayable on the Intel option.

Regards VLC playback, you don't need Nvidia for that, Intel's HD will decode that flawlessly so if you're having issues it's not an inherent issue with the intel/nvidia hardware, it's some sort of software issue.

With optimus you cannot disable the Intel graphics.

Patricide

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

There's the option in Optimus Control Panel that you can assign the dedicated GPU to automatically handle specific games. So you can, for example, set "Skyrim.exe" to "Use Nvidia GPU".

With regards Skyrim, if it was running on the Intel card, it would be running at about 10 frames a second on medium settings - so it should be instantly obvious which card is being used, it would be a literal slideshow and completely unplayable on the Intel option.

Regards VLC playback, you don't need Nvidia for that, Intel's HD will decode that flawlessly so if you're having issues it's not an inherent issue with the intel/nvidia hardware, it's some sort of software issue.

With optimus you cannot disable the Intel graphics.

I made a reply to this earlier but it seemed not to have posted. Weird.

As I stated in my post, I have already changed both the global an the individual program settings in the Nvidia control panel to no avail.

Skyrim claims its using the GTX660m in the launcher window, but I still get only around 10-15 fps in game with medium settings on. My main spec is:

CPU: Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3740QM (2.70GHz) 6MB
Ram: 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
HDD: 750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

I am 99.9% sure that is is not a software problem as video playback in VLC only judders if both my laptop screen and the TV are in duplicate mode(where the tv mirrors the laptop screen).

If I watch a video exclusively on the laptop or exclusively on the tv exclusively(using projector only mode) then playback is perfect. This would lead me to believe that the onboard graphics isn't powerful enough to run both the Laptop screen and the television screens at such high resolutions simultaneously. Cant imagine that it's a software issue.

[Deleted User]

Optimus is annoying as hell and is exactly why I've given up on modern laptops. Unless I could disable it entirely in the BIOS, it's a deal breaker for me. I had a Toshiba Satellite P50t but had to get rid of it because of Optimus issues (not only that, those bloody Synaptics ClickPads are nasty too).

The way it works is that the Intel GPU is the only one wired directly to your screens. The Nvidia GPU is not connected to anything except the Intel GPU's framebuffer. When an application is opened that requires the Nvidia GPU, the Nvidia does the rendering and then passes the rendered image into the Intel's framebuffer. So the image you see on screen is displayed by the Intel, but the actual rendering is done on the Nvidia.

Some applications are hard coded by the Nvidia driver to run on the Intel only, examples I can think of are video players such as Media Player Classic and VLC. I definitely had problems with video playback on the Intel - I got around the driver restriction by renaming Media Player Classic's executable file - I could then run it on the Nvidia GPU.

ED E

There's something else afoot here. I'm using a 3317U at the moment with the same HD4000 iGPU. Running 3x 1080P displays. In a tablet. I always either have Plex/VLC/Youtube fullscreen on one of them. No problems.

So even if optimus is being a shít, which I've no doubt it is, you should still be getting better performance.

TerrorFirmer

ED E wrote: »

There's something else afoot here. I'm using a 3317U at the moment with the same HD4000 iGPU. Running 3x 1080P displays. In a tablet. I always either have Plex/VLC/Youtube fullscreen on one of them. No problems.

So even if optimus is being a shít, which I've no doubt it is, you should still be getting better performance.

that's my point. I have optimus as well and have no issues doing that either. I get that its annoying as hell but its not a hardware limitation, something is going on with software.

try using media player classic for example instead of VLC.

also, rather than globally assigning the dedicated, there is an option to specifically assign the card to specific executables.

finally make sure you have Uninstalled both drivers and installed the latest versions of both.