Boot with External Monitor Defaults to Integrated Graphics Card

Question

I'm running into an issue with my external monitor setup, and I couldn't find any existing threads here that solved this. The problem is that when I boot my Alienware m15 with an external monitor connected (on AC power), the external monitors default to using the integrated graphics card. Windows animations lag, so things like opening/closing the start menu are jittery. Chrome taps out at an inconsistent ~40 fps - this is a particular problem because I do web game development on the machine.

Things I've tried to fix it:

Open NVIDIA control panel and change preferred graphics processor from auto to the NVIDIA card. No change.
Right click on Chrome and select run with NVIDIA card. No change.
Changing the power plan in Alienware command center to performance. No change.
Looked through the bios options but didn't find any settings that looked relevant.

The only surefire thing that fixes the issue is to pop open the device manager, disable the integrated card and re-enable the integrated card. Then Windows animations, Chrome, etc. get silky smooth framerates again. I suspect this is an optimus issue. I realize that with optimus, the iGPU controls the displays regardless, but it appears that the dGPU isn't kicking in for some reason. Any ideas on what to do?

Thanks!

More info:

My default setup is one monitor connected via HDMI and one monitor connected via mini-display port, with the laptop's internal display disabled (setting Window's project setting to "Second Screen only").
I've tested each monitor solo, same issue.
Booting to the laptop screen w/o an external monitor has never been a problem - smooth 144hz animations.
I've got the latest drivers according to SupportAssist and GeForce Experience.
I've got the latest windows updates.
I've got an m15 with i7-8750H and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060.

jphughan · Answer

Very strange.  Fyi though, the GPU that each display output is physically wired to won't change just by doing things in Device Manager.  I don't know the internal wiring of the m15, but on most dual GPU systems, most or even all display outputs are wired to the Intel GPU and the NVIDIA GPU is only ever used over NVIDIA Optimus.  On the Alienware m15, the HDMI output might be wired straight to the NVIDIA GPU to support most VR headsets.  However, that doesn't account for the fact that the behavior changes so much when you disable and re-enable the Intel GPU in Device Manager, especially if the HDMI output is in fact wired to the NVIDIA GPU, in which case the behavior of a display attached that way shouldn't change at all because it was always using the NVIDIA GPU anyway.  My guess is that you're still using the Intel GPU after that and that the low performance beforehand will simply turn out to be a bug in the Intel Graphics drivers.  You might want to report this on the Intel forums if you haven't already.

mikewesthad · Answer

Thanks for the reply. I'm still in the process of debugging, but I figured I'd share some additional info: A fresh install of Windows did not fix the issue (allowing SupportAssist and GeForce Experience to pull the latest drivers). When booting and hitting the low FPS issue on external monitors, I double checked the GPU usage with just a Chrome window open. iGPU is at 0% and dGPU >= 15% according to windows task manager and HWINFO64. NVIDIA control panel also shows Chrome and the connection port as being used by the dGPU. I've tested this with four separate monitors over HDMI and mini display port, so I've ruled out monitors, cables and individual ports as the source of the issue.

R000ney1 · Answer

Hi sorry I’m pretty late,been having the same issue, any luck yet?

Alienware

Boot with External Monitor Defaults to Integrated Graphics Card

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