how to force discrete gfx on t520?

On my new T520, which has the NVIDIA NVS4200M, I'm trying to figure out how to:

1) check on which graphics processor is currently engaged
2) change which graphics processor is currently being used

I did some digging and reading and found on Lenovo's site a doc that gives two ways of doing #1. The first was to check device manager. It says if the NVIDIA is listed under display adapters then the nvidia is currently on. I'm not sure this is always true (see below).

It also says to click on the power icon in the taskbar and there will be an option right there to switch. Mine doesn't have the option they show in their doc. I can bring up the power manager, which gives me a slider for performance, and cranking this to max *appears* to engage the NVIDIA, but I'm not sure it is. And this doesn't seem like a definitive way of doing this anyway.

The reason I'm not sure the device manager technique is working either, is that an app I'm working on appears to default itself to the intel graphics no matter what the power manager settings are at. I believe this because it runs crappy if I just double click the .exe, but if I right-click it and force it to run on the NVIDIA it runs great.

What are the definitive ways of doing my #1 and #2 above?

Thanks!

 

go into your bios under the display option choose discrete GPU.

 

I was looking for a way to change it without having to reboot. Is there a way?

 

You can use the nvidia control panel to set programs to run with either the integrated graphics or discrete gpu. I have all my games set to trigger the discrete graphics. When you click on the nvidia icon in your taskbar, it will even tell you what programs are using the nvidia gpu.