How To Make Sure Laptop Is Using Graphics Card
You need laptops with great graphics cards no matter if you are a visual content creator, video editor, or gamer. But you can’t operate anything smoothly if the graphics card is not being used properly.
Usually, there’s a graphics card integrated into the motherboard and your laptop might be using that graphics card, like intel graphics instead of the external one.
To make sure that your laptop is using the graphics card you want, you will need to select it from the program settings. You can also understand whether your laptop is using a graphics card or not by observing the performance of the laptop.
Stay tuned and I will explain how you can detect if the graphics card is being used in your laptop, and how you can select the graphics card.
Determining If The Graphics Card Is Working By Observing Hardware
There are a few tests that you can run to understand whether the graphics card is working or not. By observing a few factors you can understand what’s the problem easily. I have gathered a few ways for you which you can follow to test if your laptop is using the graphics card that you want it to use.
Inspecting the hardware
The first thing that you need to do in order to determine if there’s any hardware problem, you need to inspect the hardware thoroughly. Upon inspecting, you will be able to find out why your laptop is not using the graphics card.
There are a few components that make a graphics card work and if any of them does not work properly, your laptop will not be able to use the graphics card.
Observing the cooling fan’s condition
In most cases, due to issues with the cooling fan of the dedicated GPU, a laptop can’t use the graphics card properly. So, you need to make sure the cooling fan is working fine before anything while inspecting the hardware.
To inspect the cooling fans, you will need to take out the dedicated graphics card from the motherboard. Try to spin the fans and if you feel they are spinning effortlessly, most probably your cooling fans are fine. But there’s something to worry about if they don’t spin freely and are stuck within a few seconds.
If the fans are shaking while spinning, it’s a negative sign as well. If you see any of these signs, you should consult with an expert to determine the exact problem.
By changing the thermal paste
Changing the thermal paste might be a great idea if you are having trouble with your graphics card or if you think it’s not being used. The thermal paste gets dry over time and if your GPU is a year old or more, there’s a high probability that the thermal paste is dry by now.
If you see any significant improvement after changing the thermal paste, then surely it was the issue. You can add a GPU cooler for your laptop as well if you do high graphical work on a regular basis.
Determining If The Graphics Card Is Working By Running A Few Tests
If you don’t find any issues with the hardware, there are a number of software-based tests that you can run to find out if the laptop is working or not. Apart from that, you can play games and try editing high-quality videos to be clear. Here are a few tests that you can run to understand if your laptop is using a graphics card.
Do any stress test
There are a few apps out there that put stress on the graphics card to see its performance and figure out if there’s anything wrong. You can use any one of those and easily understand if your laptop is using the graphics card and how much.
For example, you can download the app called MSI afterburner and use it to test your fan speed. With the fan curve option, you can test whether the fans can run at optimum speed.
You can install the Furmark GPU stress test tool as well to run some tests. This app can help you with all the information about your graphics card. To perform the test you need to click the “GPU stress test” button and then click on the “GO” button when the next screen pops up.
The fans of the cooler will start spinning rapidly as the test begins and you will be able to hear the noise. The increase of speed means your graphics card is working and hence to keep the temperature under control the fans are speeding. And this will make sure that your laptop is using the graphics card.
Temperature test
One of the best ways of determining the GPU condition is to run a temperature test. Using GPU-Z software, you can get all the detailed information about the temperature of your graphics card.
After running the test, if you see the temperature is higher than it’s supposed to be, your GPU cooler might not be in good condition. But as long as you can see the temperature rise while running load tests, it means the laptop is using the graphics card. But if you see no change in temperature, that means the GPU is not being used.
Video editing
If you start rendering a video or use video editing software, you will get the idea if the laptop is using a graphics card. If your laptop is able to edit and render video smoothly and without hanging, at the same time if the picture seems smooth then there’s nothing to worry about.
But if your laptop lags or can’t process the video that you are editing, there’s a possibility that the laptop might not be using the dedicated graphics card, and might be using integrated graphics.
Playing games
By playing games you can easily figure out how much of the graphics card your laptop is using or not. Start by opening a game that support high resolution graphics and see how it runs. If you notice too much frame drop, bad picture quality, and lagging while gaming then your graphics card is probably not being used, or maybe it’s using the integrated gpu.
You can also play games on high resolution graphics, like Genshin Impact on highest graphics settings, or Forza Horizon 5. Surely, laptops with integrated graphics chipset would have a hard time coping to support such heavy lifting. I know my PC with Intel graphics can’t handle such high performance.
And if you can play your game smoothly with high performance and there’s not much frame drop, you have nothing to worry about. At the same time, the rise in temperature and speed of the cooling fan while gaming is also an indicator that your laptop is using the graphics card.
How to select the right graphics card
[amazon bestseller=”best GPU for laptop” items=”5″ template=”table”]Many people don’t even know how to use the external graphics card and they are stuck with the integrated graphics card even though they have an external graphics card added. Neither do they know how to check if the laptop is using the GPU or the CPU’s integrated graphics.
You have to manually select the graphics card you want to use as your primary graphics card and I will tell you how to do it:
First of all, go to the control panel of the Nvidia GPU and if you are wondering how to get there: right click on your laptop’s screen and find it from the taskbar. From there you will have to select the manage 3D settings option.
Then you will find the option to select the switchable graphics tab and choose the graphics card you want to use from there by clicking “preferred graphics processor”. By selecting high-performance Nvidia GPU you will be able to select any external graphics processor that you wish to.
This way you’ll be able to switch GPUs on your laptop if you have multiple options, and make sure you’re using dedicated graphics instead of integrated.
Unless you don’t have an Nvidia card, and rather have either ATI or AMD GPU, the process of selecting the card might vary. You will have to open display settings > graphics settings and select plugged in for better performance. From the 3D setting, you can adjust how the performance slider should work.
Conclusion
Having a dead GPU is troublesome but what’s more annoying is not knowing whether your laptop is using the graphics card or not. Now that you know how to make sure laptop is using graphics card, I’m sure you won’t have any problems regarding the graphics processor of your laptop at the very least. So what are you waiting for, take your laptop for a ride now that you’ve chosen the dedicated card.
