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I have a powerful nVidia GPU, an old and slow AMD GPU, and a motherboard with two PCIe slots.

I also have an old, obscure video game which has graphical glitches under nVidia cards. It's a rhythm game which requires good audio/video sync, so using a Virtual Machine is out of the question. It works fine under my old AMD card.

What is the easiest way to switch to my AMD GPU before running this specific game? Anything quicker than manually opening up my computer and switching out the cards will be an improvement.

Wowfunhappy
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  • It should be as simply as installing both cards, their drivers, then if the game allows choose which GPU to use. Strictly speaking nothing stopping you from doing this. – Ramhound Jan 09 '16 at 03:45
  • The game itself has no such option. I know nVidia drivers let you select which GPU to use, but you can't select an AMD card. – Wowfunhappy Jan 09 '16 at 03:46
  • You are our of luck then. [Similar discussion](http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/330950-nvidia-and-amd-in-the-same-system-prevents-driver-installation/) – Ramhound Jan 09 '16 at 03:48
  • I wonder if disabling the driver in device manager would be good enough – Journeyman Geek Jan 09 '16 at 04:23

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In windows 10, whichever graphics card is hooked up to the monitor that is selected as your main display is that graphics card that will be used to render the game. If you have two monitors, one monitor hooked up to each graphics card, than you can select "Make this my main display" to the monitor that is hooked up to the AMD card, then afterwards when you launch the game it will use the AMD GPU. When you want to go back to the NVIDIA card then you would need to select the monitor hooked up to the NVIDIA as the main display so that the next game or application you use will use the NVIDIA monitor.

Something I discovered is that: depending on how the game handles switching of windows, if the game does not crash while switching main displays, the game can continue using the GPU it was initially using when launched even if you switch the main display with the game still open. Using this method it is possible to launch a game under one main display to use one GPU, switch main display to a monitor being used by the other GPU, then launch a different game to use the other GPU. This way you can have two separate games or applications each using there own dedicated GPU.

(If someone figures out a way to tell windows which GPU to use for which game without having to use hacks like switching your main display, please inform me because I want to know too).

Vyacheslav Lukiyanchuk
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    Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – Community May 30 '22 at 07:34
  • If you have an iGPU and a gaming video card there's ways to pick a GPU https://superuser.com/questions/1604711/can-i-run-programs-on-a-specific-gpu/1604714#1604714 . Not sure in this case but switching monitor/outputs is the way to go. I wonder if you can use a dumb HDMI switch in reverse or abuse a KVM switcher... – Journeyman Geek May 30 '22 at 10:47