Make wallpaper engine run on integrated graphics while everything else uses my dedicated GPU?

[Flytrap]

As title says. I want to save my nvidida 2060 for other things and make WE run on integrated intel graphics.

How can i do this?

[Biohazard]

You can do this in the Windows graphics settings that you can reach from the Windows settings menu.

But if you are on a desktop computer, then doing this will degrade the performance overall. Your monitor is connected to the 2060 so instead of reducing the load you just add more load overall (on the integrated GPU) because it still needs to go through the 2060 anyway.

Wallpaper Engine has a lot of automatic pausing functions. You can configure it to "stop" while having a game (or anything else fullscreen) automatically which will entirely remove any load from the GPU just as if Wallpaper Engine wasn't running while you're playing a game, that would work much better. You can find all of these in the performance settings in Wallpaper Engine.

If you're on a laptop then Wallpaper Engine runs on the integrated GPU by default already, but you can use the same menu to choose either GPU.

[Flytrap]

Originally posted by Biohazard:

You can do this in the Windows graphics settings that you can reach from the Windows settings menu.

But if you are on a desktop computer, then doing this will degrade the performance overall. Your monitor is connected to the 2060 so instead of reducing the load you just add more load overall (on the integrated GPU) because it still needs to go through the 2060 anyway.

Wallpaper Engine has a lot of automatic pausing functions. You can configure it to "stop" while having a game (or anything else fullscreen) automatically which will entirely remove any load from the GPU just as if Wallpaper Engine wasn't running while you're playing a game, that would work much better. You can find all of these in the performance settings in Wallpaper Engine.

If you're on a laptop then Wallpaper Engine runs on the integrated GPU by default already, but you can use the same menu to choose either GPU.

Thanks for the advice but the problem is that i have a second monitor, and it'd be nice if WE could keep running on that, while paused on my main, and while i prefer using borderless in every game i can, some games i can only run at standard fullscreen. Creating stop and pause settings for borderless wont work for fullscreen, or at the very least, im having trouble sorting the entangled spaghetti out in my brain.

Coordinating all of these variables seems like hell. Which is why i wanted it to go through integrated.

Okay, that gave me an idea. It goes through my 2060 because the monitor itself is connected to the video output of the card, right? So, i just plug the secondary into the onboard HDMI port, and, then it wont go through the Nvidia card anymore, right?

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by Flytrap:

Okay, that gave me an idea. It goes through my 2060 because the monitor itself is connected to the video output of the card, right? So, i just plug the secondary into the onboard HDMI port, and, then it wont go through the Nvidia card anymore, right?

I'm afraid that won't work, the desktop window from Windows which contains the wallpaper is "always" rendered by the primary GPU and this would have to be changed to work around the entire issue. With a dedicated card installed, that will be your primary GPU (and it should, otherwise there would not be much point in it). Ideally all monitors should only be plugged into the primary GPU (or SLI/CrossFire devices) to get the best hardware acceleration in Windows.

WE should detect borderless fullscreen just like actual fullscreen as long it covers the screen regarding the automatic pausing and stopping functions.

I don't think there is any way you can leverage the integrated GPU to gain performance on your setup. Like I said, you can definitely use the Windows graphics settings and try it, but the overall desktop experience will likely suffer from what we know because the integrated and dedicated GPUs are different devices with no shared memory (that's fundamentally the issue) and Windows can't make that work the way you may expect it to.

The 2060 is strong enough to display a live wallpaper while playing a game with minimal impact but maybe you could try reducing the FPS in Wallpaper Engine or picking more lightweight wallpapers if you have issues with the performance. It will probably be easier to use the performance settings to improve things than trying to make it work well on the integrated GPU.