How to switch a video card on a laptop

Quite often you can find mobile computers equipped with a pair of video adapters. However, they do not work together, but one at a time. In this article, how to switch a video card on a laptop and in which cases it is necessary.</ p>

First of all, we need to tell you why manufacturers equip their products with two video adapters. This is done in order, to achieve an ideal ratio of battery life of the laptop and its performance. For example, connecting a laptop to an electricalnetwork, you can use a powerful graphics card, which makes it possible to play your favorite games or work with video. If you turn on the laptop in offline mode, then to extend the battery life, you must activate a weaker video adapter. In a demanding game with him you can not play, but you can work with office programs for a long time, look for information on the Internet or just watch movies.

In order to switch the video card of the laptop, need specialized software: you must install driversboth video adapters. It will be necessary to go to the official website of the manufacturer of your laptop and download the necessary software, corresponding to the model. However, on the site of the notebook manufacturer, you will only find drivers for the integrated graphics card. The second video adapter will require the installation of software downloaded from the official website of its own manufacturer.

After installing all the drivers required Reboot the laptop. If your computer is installed Intel processor and Nvidia graphics card, switching the video card will always happen automatically. If your laptop is using AMD Radeon graphics card, you should open the application AMD Control Center, which is usually installed with the device drivers.

In this program, you need go to the Power Express utility. Before you will appear a menu consisting of two items: "High GPU Performance" and "Low Power Consumption". Accordingly, the first item will include a more powerful video card, and the second will make the integrated video adapter active.

Besides, you can completely disable one of the video cards, so that there is no longer any need for switching. For this go into BIOS: restart the laptop and when the information about the motherboard appears, press the key «F2». Next, go to the tab Advanced Setup (Options). Then in the settings menu, find the options for the video adapters and set the parameter for the unnecessary graphics card "Disable".

At this stage, you should be extremely careful. If immediately after changing this setting, the image on the display completely disappears, press the power button of the notebook to turn off the device. In this way The changed settings will not be saved., and the laptop can be used again. The absence of an image indicates that the model of the motherboard of your device does not provide for the complete disconnection of one of the video adapters. In this case will have to be limited only by software switching of video cards.

As you could see, switching the video card on a laptop is quite easy. Only install special software, which can easily be found on the World Wide Web. We hope that the tips given in this article will help you to rationally use the battery power of your device.