Laptop graphics card switching issue

[Darth Hotpants]

New to the forums so don't burn me if I'm in the wrong place. I'm having a big issue and I haven't been able to find a good answer. Let me set things up real quick:

I own an MSI GT60 Dominator Pro 3k laptop. It was equipped with a GTX 880m, which up and died last week. I was able to source a 970m as a replacement. This laptop was designed with some upgradability, so after some minor heatsink modification I got the card installed. It seemed to be recognized and work right out of the gate! Then came the main issue...

Steam is refusing to use the new card. I have tried directing it to the new card via the NVIDIA control panel. I've tried directing the various game executable the same way to the graphics card with the same result. They all fire up using the integrated Intel graphics card. I've tried multiple games. I've tried Destiny 2, The Witcher 2, Dark Souls, and Alan Wake. Many suggest people with a similar issue simply disable the Intel card in the device manager, which I have tried and it doesn't work. Destiny 2 won't even boot, giving me a "failed to initialize GPU" type of error. Witcher 2 STILL somehow uses the Intel card. Alan Wake also gave me an error about failing to 3d render, or something like that.

Now before I'm told that the card isn't working OR that it's hardware or windows related, Fortnite runs perfectly. It runs much better than it did on the 880m tbh, which was also expected on the better hardware. Obviously Fortnite uses the Epic launcher, so this leaves me with the common denominator of Steam being the issue. Any advice or help out there?

Running current version of Windows 10, Steam, latest geforce drivers, etc.

Also, there's no way to disable the Intel card in the Bios, I've checked. Not that disabling the intel card is a "solution" technically anyway, just a bad workaround.

Thanks a lot!!!

[Darth Hotpants]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย notkennyS:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Darth Hotpants:

No dice. Just fired up Destiny 2, and it’s still using the Intel card. Even changed control panel setting to use the 970m again.

Do you get the option to switch to Nvidia in the game's video settings?

I’ll check, I know the Witcher and Alan Wake don’t have in-game options for that. Maybe Destiny does.

[Darth Hotpants]

Nada. I don’t get why Steam refuses to use the 970m...

[Darth Hotpants]

Fired up Destiny 2, no 970m, fires up Fortnite, buttery 970m goodness... ugh.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Launch Steam client.
Then go to the game folder that has the game exe and right click it and try launching it this way and select to use the nvidia gpu via the right click options.

[Darth Hotpants]

Steam client running, went to steam library game folders and launched Alan Wake via right-click run with graphics processor -> high performance NVIDIA processor (default)... launches on Intel graphics card.

It’s so strange. Typically when the laptop switches cards, you get a noticeable black screen, almost like you’d get with an input selector on a tv or something similar. The Epic launcher does this when it fires up. Not sure if Steam doesn’t trigger this change because it only opens up a smaller window, but it definitely doesn’t trigger the same switchover.

On a side note, I tried firing up steam and some of those games while the epic launcher was up and running and listed in my GPU Activity window... still uses Intel.

[Darth Hotpants]

Just tried running Steam in “big picture mode” to see if that’d help... it didn’t.

I hate this issue so much right now...

[Komrade]

You reenabled the igpu right?

[Darth Hotpants]

Uhh... you mean after I reinstalled the drivers? It never technically disabled I don’t think. Once I used DDU to remove all the drivers and rebooted, windows fired up IDing them both as generic display adapters.

Installed driver for the intel, restarted, installed drivers for 970, restarted again. Does that answer your question?

[Darth Hotpants]

Holy crap I think I found the solution. Honestly kind of surprising this wasn’t suggested anywhere online.

So, what apparently I needed to do was go into windows’ display settings. You scroll to the bottom of the page and click the red “graphical settings” text. Once up, you can select “Classic App” and specifically browse for the game .exe. Once selected, windows gives you three options to select how to start up the “app.” If you choose “high performance” then the games will launch using nvidia card.

Props to the random Linus Tech tips video I watched where I saw them do this. They did it in a video where they attempt to game on a 1060 designed specifically for crypto mining.

Hope this helps someone else!!!