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Hey everyone,

Not sure where to post this, you'll see why. Sorry if this is the wrong place.

So, I built a PC for my GF using all my old parts after I upgraded my machine. basically everything except the motherboard and a couple drives made the trip over. I set everything up, updated all drivers, etc, and then she tried to play Life is Strange 2. Thing is, the game chugged really bad. PC should be able to run it fine as it has an i5-3570k and and RX 480, but it was seriously in the 20-30 fps range even on medium and 1080p.

After tons of trouble shooting (initially thought it was thermal throttling because of the case and intel stock cooler. replaced cooler and thermals are now fine) I've determined that some games like Life is Strange 2 and Borderlands 2, when launched default to using integrated graphics rather than the RX 480. In contrast, Divinity Original Sin 2 ran fine, probably because its graphics settings have a GPU selector built in.

So, I've trouble shot (shooted?) more and figured out how to force individual apps to use the GPU. Fine, but I have to be sure the game launches from the actually EXE, rather than some shortcut that Steam uses or it still goes back to the integrated GPU. Once the game is using the dedicated GPU, everything is as expected and the games play smoothly.

My question is how do I fix this permanently for all games going forward. I don't want my girlfriend to have to make this change for every game since that is annoying. Also, why wouldn't a game use the dedicated GPU? Seems silly.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Is this only happening with Steam games? Does it happen with other launchers (Origin for example) or for games that are standalone?

If it's only happening in Steam, then it sounds like for whatever reason Steam doesn't recognize your GPU as an option, or sees some problem with it, and is therefore setting the default to something it does recognize - in this case the integrated graphics.

If that is the case, I'd check with Steam support.

cphite wrote:

Is this only happening with Steam games? Does it happen with other launchers (Origin for example) or for games that are standalone?

If it's only happening in Steam, then it sounds like for whatever reason Steam doesn't recognize your GPU as an option, or sees some problem with it, and is therefore setting the default to something it does recognize - in this case the integrated graphics.

If that is the case, I'd check with Steam support.

Haven't even tried other launchers since this LiS2 was one thing I wanted to get working. Will have to test others.

Thanks!

You can usually disable the on board graphics.

That might be all you need to do.

Also try initiallizing peg or pci e graphics first both settings should be in bios.