Windows 7 - Intel HD Graphics

Hi,

I recently downloaded 3DMark to see what my new computer could do.
I was however, dissapointed with its performance. It was getting 5-10 FPS on the extreme 3dmark setting. When the test finished, i realized it ran on the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator instead of the GTX 580.

I want to disable the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator completely.
I googled it, but all i got was laptops results ( optimus problems ), and i also searched the bios a little, but i didn't want to screw around with the settings that i didn't know the result of.

I tried disabling first and when that didnt work i uninstalled it from device manager. It still is getting mediocre results on 3DMark, so i'm assuming its still being used?


Thanks,
Alex.

I noticed you have a i7 2600k and I understand when you couple it with a Z68 mobo. Your virtu feature is supposed to switch the graphics engine to whatever is best, depending on the application you are running, the Intel HD Graphics 3000 on the chip or the video card. There must be a way to temporarily disable the graphics on the chip so that the video card is being used in your test. Just an idea. Check with the mobo's manufacturer's web site to see if they have the info you need.
Good Luck

The new Intel processors with integral graphics are presenting new problems with configuration and setup that we are all learning about. Your post is the first time I have heard of this issue cropping up on a desktop. Perhaps others here have more information than I have. I do not own or maintain any desktops with integral processors, so I just have not had to deal with it....... yet.

There has been a discussion and discovery session going on here Acer Laptop: Switchable Graphics using i7 & AMD Radeon regarding the issue on laptops. As you can see from that thread, no one has found a satisfying solution to the problem of manually choosing which graphics to use yet.

For the laptops the solution will be found in the BIOS settings and/or the laptop graphics drivers. It really comes down to a matter of: did the motherboard manufacturer recognize the need and design in a 'switch' to allow for user setting/disabling of the integrated graphics?

For your desktop situation the first thing you want to check is whether there is a setting in your BIOS that will allow you to disable the Intel graphics on the processor. There is not a lot of danger, in a modern system, to making changes in these settings. If something goes wrong and you could not boot there are ways to restore the BIOS default settings to recover fairly easily.

General advice: before starting any BIOS settings edits, always record your current settings so you can set them all back easily if you ever need to restore defaults.

But keep in mind that the way this new tech is supposed to work is that the computer will use the low power integrated Intel graphics when there is no need for graphics horsepower and automatically switch to the graphics card/chip when horsepower is called for. In the laptops anyway, there seems to be a lag in the tech for the performance testing software where the software does not 'know' to call for the system to switch to the higher graphics. It seems the software itself does not need a lot of graphics muscle to run so no switching occurs and the test are run on the Intel graphics only. (Note: my hypothesis)

So one annoying answer is to leave it alone and stop running tests until you run into a performance issue while gaming that justifies it.
But as you can see in the above post, it is merely the fact that you don't have the choice that is aggravating most people.