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May 15th, 2018 06:00
Dell 15 7573 with 4k display wrong or missing GPU? Confused!
Purchased this Laptop not even a week ago and on the box as well as BestBuy's advertisement https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-2-in-1-15-6-4k-ultra-hd-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-mx130-256gb-ssd-abyss-black/6208307.p?skuId=6208307 states it has a Nvidia GeForce MX130 GPU.
But in it's Bios information screen it is showing two devices one is the Intel® UHD Graphics and the other is "Unknown device". Graphics drivers that are loaded in device manager is one for the Intel® UHD Graphics, and one for the GeForce MX130. I am confused as to whether I have an Nvidia GPU or integrated Intel® UHD Graphics. I have two control panels to modify settings for both. Is it possible to have two graphics drivers running at the same time? Do I have both Intel® UHD Graphics and Nivida MX130 in hardware. I know the 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-8550U processor has the UHD graphics integrated into it. Seems both drivers are enabled without errors. Again in BIOS only Intel® UHD Graphics is showing. But there is also an "Unknown Device" for graphics adapter showing up to? What do I really have?


jphughan
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May 15th, 2018 07:00
Not sure why the NVIDIA GPU is detected as an Unknown Device in the BIOS -- maybe try downloading and installing the latest BIOS firmware update if that's just a cosmetic bug that has since been fixed? -- but if it's properly identified in Device Manager, then you definitely have an NVIDIA GPU. Having multiple graphics cards in the same system has been pretty commonplace on laptops for quite a while now. In the most common design found in most laptops, most likely including yours, the Intel GPU is the only one physically wired to the display outputs, and it is always active. The NVIDIA GPU is used only when the drivers detect that an application that is currently running would benefit from its additional horsepower, or you can go into the NVIDIA Control Panel to force it to run with certain applications if necessary, though it's usually not. But even when it's active, it operates as a render-only device which then passes completed video frames to the Intel GPU to output them to the appropriate display(s). This design means that when you don't need the extra graphics horsepower, you benefit from the reduced battery consumption of only having the Intel GPU active, but the NVIDIA GPU can still transparently be enabled on-demand when performance is the priority. And just as a fun fact, part of the reason that basically every laptop now has an Intel GPU is that Intel now builds the GPU into the CPU, and most if not all laptop systems use CPU models that have the GPU element included.
AlienLifeForm
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May 15th, 2018 08:00
Looks like another new BIOs is available. Started with 1.7.0 then a new one a couple days was 1.5.4 (lower version but new?) and then 1.8.0 was just released so I'll try flashing that one today.
I kind of thought this laptop was making use of the Nvidia GPU only when it needed it. That was the only answer I could come up with that would make any sense other then hardware detection was messed up for some reason. I ran the rendering tests from the NVidia Test Panel and it performed OK. Laptop fan came on as I would expect. I'll see what happens when I update the BIOS tonight. Thanks.