Nvidia Laptop Bios Dedicated GPU

Hi everyone,

I've always used my 970m as a dedicated gpu by changing the setting in the bios when i first bought this laptop. But as of recently I stopped playing games and wanted more battery life out of it so I changed it to its default.

My question is, now that it's supposed to hover between the intel graphics and the 970m depending on the task, were I to play a game from Steam, will the laptop automatically recognize that I want the 970m to run it, or do I need to change a setting somewhere first?

And also, is it true (or just an urban myth), that if you don't put your nvidia gpu as dedicated in the bios, it will run slightly worse, even if the computer correctly auto-selects it when you play games?

Thank you all

 

Use the nvidia control panel to select the programs to which you want to use the nvidia and the integrated gpu

 

It should do that auto but if you're not sure the NCP has an option in the right click as to which gpu to use when hitting the exe. As well as what was mentioned above you can go in the NCP and set it in the manage 3d settings menu. In the settings w the rotating nvidia logo set it to use advanced 3d settings.

As to the performance I get mixed messages when searching the net, I think there's a thread here that deals with that but from what I remember seems to focus on newer hardware than maxwell. I have a 980m but it is not able to be installed without optimus enabled unfortunately, drivers won't install even modded ones. It's especially a headache with my external screen, most games don't have the option to choose which screen to output to and I've encountered a lot of bugginess doing it manually aka dragging it over. It's a lot cleaner just using one gpu imo Trying to stream on one screen and play on another is really a major pain.

 

Awesome guys. Thanks a lot for those answers.