Game won't run with my dedicated GPU.

As the title states.

So I reinstalled The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and upon booting the game up noticed that it was running on the iGPU. "Not too big of a deal" I figured, "I'll just set the Nvidia control panel to force it to use the dGPU." Well that didn't work. "Ok, well I guess I'll just right click the icon on my desktop and click run with high performance Nvidia processor." Guess what, that didn't work either. "Ok I'll just skip the shortcut and right click on the .exe file itself." Nope, didn't work. "Hmm maybe the Nvidia Control panel changes didn't work because I didn't run as an admin?" So then I opened the Nvidia Control panel as an admin through the Windows Control Panel, and after checking that Morrowind.exe was to use the dGPU, I then ran the game as an admin. Guess what? That didn't work.

Well I'm out of ideas everyone, did I miss something completely obvious? Or is there anything else I haven't tired?

 

This seems to be a common problem with optimus notebooks, older games simply refuse to run on dGPU.

 

What a drag. Hopefully someone knows some sort of workaround.

 

I had problems too with Morrowind on my old Optimus laptop. I managed to get it running with the dGPU, but when I did the game would crash constantly. If your iGPU isn't too bad i'd suggest just using that for now.

 

Is this on the Lenovo laptop in your signature? Have you tried disabling SLI and then forcing the .exe to use the dGPU?

 

Is this a new occurrence, i.e. did Morrowind used to work on the dGPU in the past?

Can you grab Nvidia Profile Inspector and try these Optimus-related settings? (Do it in the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind profile).

How about re-enabling SLI and setting the game to single GPU using this setting?

Well Optimus only works when SLI is disabled, so OP is already running in single GPU.

 

Maybe I didn't understand your original post completely, but you set the morrowind.exe to use dGPU directly (choose "high performance Nvidia processor") or did you leave it as "Use Global Setting: (Auto Select: Nvidia GPU)"

 

My laptop allows me to remove the second dGPU (via an ultrabay) and run with one dGPU which gives me Optimus support. This is the configuration where I'm experiencing the issue.

Every other time I've played Morrowind on this laptop I did it with both my dGPUs installed. This is the first time I tried playing it with only a single dGPU installed (and thus Optimus enabled). I tried the Optimus settings you linked to by the way. Unfortunately, they made no difference. If I have both dGPUs in the laptop, then I just set the game to run with a single dGPU, which works without issue.

Spoiler: That's correct.

 

*BUMP*

Does anyone have a suggestion? Or am I just out of luck?

 

I had an issue like this once. All i did was uninstall and remove the driver for Nvidia and then reinstall it once more.

 

Thanks for the suggestion mate, but unfortunately reinstalling my drivers didn't solve the problem.

 

The only solution is the one you've already found. Run with the second GPU installed.

 

If that's the case, then good for me but given that practically every Nvidia laptop supports optimus (save ones with G-Sync or SLI), then this is a pretty big problem. It implies that if I get, say a new Alienware 18 or Razer Blade or whatever then I'll be stuck using the iGPU for certain optimus incompatible titles. That's almost unbelievable, hence why I thought there must be some oblivious solution I simply missed.

 

Laptop with G-Sync = no Optimus. Keep that in mind.

 

Isn't that what he meant by "save ones with G-Sync or SLI"?

 

I suppose he missed that bit yrekabakery, because that's exactly what I meant. Thus the point stands, and I'm still flabbergasted.