Question Integrated AMD Radeon and dedicated NVIDIA GeForce. How to know which GPU is my AMD Freesync external display using?

[ayrtonsom]

I have a Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 with both an integrated AMD Ryzen 5 (Radeon Graphics) and a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 3050. I'm about to buy a monitor with AMD Freesync, but I'm almost sure I won't be able to take advantage of that feature, since I've read that most laptops' HDMI ports connect external displays directly to the dedicated GPU, which in this case is an NVIDIA and therefore doesn't have AMD Freesync. However, I've also read about some laptops which use the integrated GPU to handle all displays, and only use the dedicated GPU to render heavy stuff (e.g. my GeForce would render every individual frame of a game, and then send it to the integrated AMD card which in turn would send it to the display. But if I wasn't playing or doing any graphical heavy lifting, my GTX would remain idle and my Radeon will keep handling whatever my second monitor was rendering).

How can I know for sure what is the case for my particular laptop? Is there any place inside Windows where I can check which GPU is handling a particular display?

 

[Etrius vanRandr]

How can I know for sure what is the case for my particular laptop? Is there any place inside Windows where I can check which GPU is handling a particular display?

Hook up a screen and check NVIDIA Control Panel. It can tell you which GPU the screen is connected to.

My ZBook has its displayport output hooked to the NVIDIA GPU but the VGA port is hooked to the Intel GPU.

You can also set the laptop to not shut down when you close the lid, which can also help indicate which GPU the display is connected to.

 

[ayrtonsom]

Hook up a screen and check NVIDIA Control Panel. It can tell you which GPU the screen is connected to.

My ZBook has its displayport output hooked to the NVIDIA GPU but the VGA port is hooked to the Intel GPU.

You can also set the laptop to not shut down when you close the lid, which can also help indicate which GPU the display is connected to.

Thanks a lot! Was going to try the NVIDIA Control Panel trick, but the system control panel in Windows 11 is rather clear when it comes to display management, and it says right there in the configuration which GPU is managing my monitors. I've never used an external display with this laptop before, so I didn't know Windows was so clear about it. In case anyone reads this in the future and is wondering about this specific laptop model, the HDMI port is hooked to the integrated AMD Radeon.

Now I know I'll be able to enjoy FreeSync, but I wonder if I'll experience any performance issues do to the fact that the Radeon will take away its 2 GBs of VRAM from my system RAM, while leaving my GTX 3050 with its 4GB of dedicated VRAM completely unused, unless I'm doing GPU intensive tasks which force the GTX start working. Not sure how GPU intensive and VRAM intensive a single external display might be, but I'll do my reasearch.

 

[Etrius vanRandr]

the HDMI port is hooked to the integrated AMD Radeon.

Enjoy your 13% performance loss due to passthrough, lol. That's the average loss on my ZBook at least.

 

[ayrtonsom]

Enjoy your 13% performance loss due to passthrough, lol. That's the average loss on my ZBook at least.

Well, thanks for being so precise about the performance issue I was worrying about . Not sure how this works internally yet, but it is weird that having a rather good integrated GPU is actually a liability, and one would be better off with just the dedicated one. My IdeaPad Gaming doesn't even have a MUX switch, so I guess I'll have to live with the fact I'm leaving some performance on the table.

 

[Etrius vanRandr]

My IdeaPad Gaming doesn't even have a MUX switch, so I guess I'll have to live with the fact I'm leaving some performance on the table.

My ZBook has a mux but it doesn't work with Pascal cards for some reason.

 

[hilmer52]

The computer will always detect you what it will use with the better card you have