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PC Graphics

KrispyK
Journeyman III

Using onboard graphics with dedicated GPU - can this boost graphics power?

Hi guys,

This is a re-hash of a question that has popped up before, but I've not found a clear answer on it yet, and equipment capabilities change over time, so in any case an updated answer might be instructive. I have just built a new PC with:

Mobo: ASUS TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS

CPU: Ryzen 9 7900X

GPU: Radeon RX 6800

RAM: 32GB DDR5

Windows 11 Pro

Monitor: Acer XV282K (3840 x 2160)

When I am gaming I can see that the onboard GPU is not doing anything. Can I increase my FPS (or perhaps graphics quality settings) by using both GPUs at the same time on the one monitor? If so, how? Does any potential benefit depend on the game being coded to use multiple GPUs (and so vary from game to game)?

Thanks in advance.

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3 Replies
Speedyblupi
Adept I

No, it is not possible to use the integrated GPU and graphics card together for the same task with this combination of hardware.

 

It is actually possible with some AMD APUs and graphics cards from about 10 years ago (called "Radeon dual graphics"), but it often didn't result in any increase in performance, because the latency penalty of communicating between the two GPUs usually exceeded the minor performance improvement from adding the extra performance of the integrated GPU to the graphics card. Games needed to be optimised to run on multiple GPUs in order to gain a significant amount of performance from dual graphics. I had an old laptop with 8650G + 8750M dual graphics, but most games actually ran better when dual graphics was disabled. AMD dropped support for dual graphics just a few years after introducing it, because very few game developers wanted to optimise for it.

 

However, it is sometimes possible to use an integrated GPU and graphics card for different tasks at the same time. For example, in some recording software, it is possible to use your graphics card to play a game, while using your integrated GPU to record and encode video of your gameplay. This can be useful for streamers and other content creators who want to ensure that all of their graphics card's bandwidth and computational power can be dedicated to running a game. An RX 6800 will typically lose about 5% of its gaming performance if you use its onboard video encoder at the same time.

This is misinformation: https://community.amd.com/t5/gaming/amd-and-microsoft-advance-hybrid-graphics-for-gamers/ba-p/626332

 

I own a 9900X CPU and a 4090 RTX. Both different graphics manufacturers: NVIDIA and AMD

 

Super ultrawide monitor at 120hz 5120x1440 plugged into the motherboard.

iGPU set as primary device in BIOS

4090 set as secondary device

 

NVIDIA can see that it is no longer a primary display device. It sits idle in Windows when I'm doing nothing intensive. When I launch a game or 3D app that exceeds the ability of the iGPU to render at the desired FPS (120Hz), e.g. 3DMark, BOTH the iGPU and the dedicated GPU are in use. The rendering performance is higher than either alone and my benchmark score is just shy of the 79503XD (with its humongous cache and core count) and similar 4090 RTX.

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You can do something similar but with 2 or more GPU cards installed using AMD MGPU: https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/faqs/DH3-018.html

 

But in a desktop, as far as I am aware, you can't uses both IGPU and GPU card together as one GPU. In laptops, at least in the past, you can use IGPU and GPU together but that is not common any more.

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