external graphics card for laptop and desktop

External graphics card for laptop and desktop how to#
External graphics card for laptop and desktop drivers#
External graphics card for laptop and desktop manual#
External graphics card for laptop and desktop windows 10#

Once upon a time I was young and frivolous with my money. I'm writing this because it seems that the industry just isn't making it accessible to the masses, so we need to help them along a little.

External Monitor optional, can power the internal laptop screen.

Upgrading to play the latest games in two years' time can be done by upgrading the graphics card only - not the entire setup.

Powerful external graphics card to play games on when docked that can beat top gaming laptops.

Small and light 12' Windows 8.1 tablet for portability.

So my highly portable, small, light, tablet machine just bested a 17' behemoth 'gaming laptop' that is about 3x heavier? and this is how it looks on my desk: This setup is approaching 2 years old now so if we compare this to a top 17' gaming laptop purchasable at the same period we come up with 3dMark2011 scores of around 5,900 mark (Alienware M17x R4, using a Nvidia GTX 680M GPU. To resolve this performance issue I have an external Nvidia 670GTX desktop card that connects to the tablet like a docking station so that when plugged in the very same little 12' tablet provides a 3dMark2011 score of: However I also enjoy gaming and sadly the tablet's integrated Intel HD4000 graphics only provide a 3dMark2011 score of:

External graphics card for laptop and desktop how to#

That covers how to specify which GPU should be doing the work, but how can you be sure that your settings have actually worked? If you have the latest version of Windows 10, you can simply open up Task Manager and switch to the Performance tab.I move around quite a lot for my job, so I use a 12' ultraportable Windows 8.1 tablet PC. If you can’t seem to get a GPU change to stick, check if the app in question has its own setting. This should override whatever other settings on the system are in place in most cases. Many professional applications and even video games will let you specify which GPU to use in their own graphics settings. You can open Display Settings by right-clicking on the Desktop.

External graphics card for laptop and desktop windows 10#

Regardless of your GPU brand, in the latest version of Windows 10 you can set per-app GPU preferences under Display Settings > Graphics Settings. Simply open the AMD Catalyst control application and look for a “switchable graphics” or similarly-named section. While we don’t have an AMD GPU at hand, the process is very similar.

Right-click on the desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel.

Here is how you can override that setting: It uses the Nvidia Optimus system to dynamically switch between the two based on which is most suitable. The computer we’re using in this example has a Geforce 1660 Ti dedicated GPU and an Intel UHD 630 integrated GPU. How to Switch Between Dedicated and Integrated GPUs

This utility is usually the key to determining which GPU an application will use. The second is the suite of utilities that GPUs come with these days. The first is the GPU driver, which makes it possible for Windows to actually talk to the hardware.

The last point may be especially important, since modern GPUs have two software components.

Have you installed the latest version of the GPU companion software?.

External graphics card for laptop and desktop drivers#

Are you running the latest drivers for both GPUs?.

Are you running the latest version of Windows?.

External graphics card for laptop and desktop manual#

The last bit of housekeeping you should do before messing around with manual GPU switching is to ensure that everything is up to date: Assuming that you only have two GPUs in the system and that the two you want to switch between are those listed.