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Drivers & Software

Caesum
Adept I
‎07-11-2022 07:03 AM

UI stutter when AMD drivers installed on Advanced NVIDIA Optimus Windows 11 laptop

I bought a laptop a few months ago with Advanced Nvidia Optimus technology (MUX switch) and it's been a rollercoaster of VGA related issues ever since.
 
My laptop has two issues (well, more, but those two are deal breaking):
1. Laptop has micro-freezes (0.5-3 seconds long) when using certain UI elements, eg. wifi/speaker/battery button, right clicking on desktop, locking the account, turning off laptop, using browser, maximizing minimized apps.
2. Laptop stutters every 10-20 seconds when it's unplugged from power. It happens either on AMD or NVIDIA GPU, but never on both during same session.
 
I have noticed that if I turn off Hybrid Mode (MUX switch on), I don't have this problem, but I also lose ability to use the lovely AMD GPU that is great for older games.
I have also noticed that UI stuttering does not appear for as long as I don't install AMD drivers.
I have tried both Lenovo certified drivers as well as official drivers from AMD and NVIDIA site, turning off AMD PSP, reinstalling drivers with/without DDU, changing power plans, nothing works. The laptop will just stutter with MUX off/Hybrid Mode on.
 
After reading different threads for different laptops I think that both issues are caused by Advanced NVIDIA Optimus technology.
 
Is there a way to make this thing work? My old laptop had older Optimus technology and it worked great. This one is the newer and pricier laptop and it has worse stuttering than the old one lol. It drives me crazy but neither Lenovo nor NVIDIA knows what to do... They just tell me to turn off Hybrid Mode/iGPU.
 
UI micro freezes on AMD look like this:
 
Constant stuttering on battery on AMD/NVIDIA is like this:
 
Please somebody help me. I want to be an AMD user but everyone tells me to just turn it off instead of helping fix it.
 
PC: Lenovo Legion 5 15ACH6H
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600H 3,30 Ghz
GPU: Radeon Graphics + Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 6023 MB VRAM
RAM: 16 GB RAM
HDD: SSD Samsung MZVLB1T0HBLR-000L2 1TB (1 partycja NTFS oraz 2 systemowe)
Battery: Lith-Polymer battery 60Wh 15.36 V/17.37V
Power: 230 WAT Power Brick
OS: Windows 11 Home 64-bit, compilation 22000
Drivers: AMD Adrenaline Edition 22.5.1 and NVIDIA 516.59
2 Replies
Vynski
Paragon
‎07-11-2022 08:39 AM

Here is what I found on Nvidia's site about Advanced Optimus:

Display-specific features available on discrete GPU (like NVIDIA® G-SYNC®, higher refresh rates) may not be available on the laptop display even though the discrete GPU can support them  

Copying over each displayable surface introduces a performance and latency overhead.

Here is the link https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5097/~/nvidia-advanced-optimus-overview.  

Go there and read the entire solution.

 

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Caesum
In response to Vynski
Adept I
‎07-11-2022 10:34 AM

Thank you for your answer.

Judging from your quote this seems to be only the issue with older NVIDIA Optimus version where you couldn't choose the GPU like in case of Advanced Optimus. Everything was always directed through iGPU there. I have an old 2014 Acer which has this Optimus version and it actually doesn't have any of the mentioned issues. There are no stutters there whatsoever.

 

I did check the rest of the article though and:

"Advanced Optimus allows dynamically switching an internal VESA Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) laptop display panel across different display adapters and hence offering a great battery life, performance and benefits of Gsync and high refresh rate."

This sounds like laptops with MUX switch (like my Legion) actually can use GSync and high refresh rate without problems.

 

I did turn off FreeSync anyway and GSync isn't available with Hybrid Mode at all, so I don't think it's this issue. I was thinking about the "high refresh rate" being the issue maybe, but:

1. The first issue occurs even when plugged in, with no second display. With GSync/FreeSync off.

2. The second issue is not GPU dependent and can happen on both AMD and NVIDIA, and with CTRL+SHIFT+B can be moved from one GPU to another. So this doesn't sound like a hardware/technology limitation either. More like OS/Driver issue.

 

An interesting thing is said here:

"The display screen may appear to be frozen for a few seconds when the display is switched between integrated and discrete GPUs (may take longer on Windows 11)."

This sounds like the first issue I have when using Windows 11 UI elements, so I think it further proves that for some reason Windows 11 triggers dGPU when using parts of UI.

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