GTX 1050 turning on and off repeatedly

[Downloaded]

Hi Everyone,

I recently bought a Dell XPS 15 9560 with a beautiful 4K screen, intel 630 graphics and a GTX 1050 GPU. It's generally working well, though I noticed in MSI Afterburner yesterday that the GTX 1050 seems to be turning on an off at roughly 1 second intervals even when its not being used by any programs according to the NVidia Control Panel. With NVidia Inspector I was able to see that it's only cycling between 0% and 1% load repeatedly, but it just strikes me as odd that it would do so even when I'm only looking at the desktop, where the Intel HD 630 should be doing all the work and the GTX 1050 should be entirely disabled. Is this normal? Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can disable the GPU completely when it's not being used by a program that really needs it? I am not particularly concerned about degrading my hardware since it's only being used a very small amount, but it seems like it might adversely affect my battery life, which is sort of annoying.

Any advice or ideas you have would be greatly appreciated  .

[mail929]

My friend had an XPS with a similar problem. I think it was a Dell program that was causing the issue. To just turn off the GPU there should be an option in the Nvidia Control Panel to always/never use it.

[Downloaded]

4 minutes ago, mail929 said:

My friend had an XPS with a similar problem. I think it was a Dell program that was causing the issue. To just turn off the GPU there should be an option in the Nvidia Control Panel to always/never use it.

Thanks for your response!  Ideally I don't want to disable the GTX 1050 entirely, just when it's not being used for games.  Any chance you could check with your friend which program it was that caused the issue?  Would be a huge help.  FWIW, it seems like the GPU still cycles between 0% and 1% when I have the integrated graphics selected in global settings.

[genexis_x]

12 minutes ago, Downloaded said:

Is this normal?

Yes, my laptop does this too

[Downloaded]

1 minute ago, ZM Fong said:

Yes, my laptop does this too

Same laptop or different?

[genexis_x]

Just now, Downloaded said:

Same laptop or different?

Different. It's a Y520 (see my signature please)

 

Probably Nvidia Optimus kicing in so don't worry

[Downloaded]

3 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

Different. It's a Y520 (see my signature please)

 

Probably Nvidia Optimus kicing in so don't worry

It's just odd because I believe when I bought the laptop, the GPU flatlined at 0% unless it was being explicitly used.  Since you have a Lenovo, you probably don't have any Dell software installed, implying that mail929's response might not tell the whole story.  The only thing I can think of might be that I have f.lux installed, which dynamically changes the hue of my screen depending on the time of day.  It could potentially be considered a "full-screen" program that's always running and constantly making changes depending on the time of day.  Do you use f.lux as well?

[mail929]

1 hour ago, Downloaded said:

Thanks for your response!  Ideally I don't want to disable the GTX 1050 entirely, just when it's not being used for games.  Any chance you could check with your friend which program it was that caused the issue?  Would be a huge help.  FWIW, it seems like the GPU still cycles between 0% and 1% when I have the integrated graphics selected in global settings.

He says it still happens sometimes with chrome, which makes sense because occasionally Chrome may need some more GPU power. He also said it mostly got better on its own after BIOS and Driver updates.

[Downloaded]

5 minutes ago, mail929 said:

He says it still happens sometimes with chrome, which makes sense because occasionally Chrome may need some more GPU power. He also said it mostly got better on its own after BIOS and Driver updates.

Ah, sounds like we have slightly different issues then.  Thanks very much for checking, though.  I really appreciate it :).