question about hardware acceleration

[PSL]

i have a cpu with integrated graphics (i5-11500) and a separate independent gpu. so, when i turn on "hardware acceleration" on google chrome, does the system automaticcaly involve intel's intergrated graphics to help cpu decoding youtube videos, or does it prioritise my independent gpu to help decoding instead? can i change these settings?

[Nuggetech]

17 minutes ago, PSL said:

i have a cpu with integrated graphics (i5-11500) and a separate independent gpu. so, when i turn on "hardware acceleration" on google chrome, does the system automaticcaly involve intel's intergrated graphics to help cpu decoding youtube videos, or does it prioritise my independent gpu to help decoding instead? can i change these settings?

Chrome uses the most powerful graphics card installed on the system. Of course, it depends on whether the dedicated graphics card is more powerful or not (I've seen people using Geforce 210 with this processor).
But this can be changed in the settings.

Go to Settings > System > Display. Graphics settings.
select whether Chrome should use the "Power saving" (integrated GPU) or "High performance" (dedicated GPU) .

[Imakuni]

1 hour ago, PSL said:

i have a cpu with integrated graphics (i5-11500) and a separate independent gpu. so, when i turn on "hardware acceleration" on google chrome, does the system automaticcaly involve intel's intergrated graphics to help cpu decoding youtube videos, or does it prioritise my independent gpu to help decoding instead? can i change these settings?

Everything uses the main GPU by default. In fact, unless you specifically told otherwise, your iGPU shouldn't even be enabled to begin with.

 

As for changing it (assuming you force enable the iGPU), yes, you can do it. Some well coded programs allow you to select the gpu manually, but even if not, you can do it at an OS level. Though it's probably not worth it outside of very niche circumstances.

[TudorFinalBosz]

I have the same CPU and I think I once tried to do this test: run my second monitor on the iGPU and my main monitor on the main video card. From what I remember it didn't work. Maybe this varies by motherboard and CPU, I found people reporting on the internet they could run graphics simultaneously with both CPU and video card.

 

At least with my setup (i5-11500 on GIGABYTE B560M AORUS ELITE) I have to go in the BIOS and enable either the iGPU or the video card. Which I tested and it works. But not both. Could be something about motherboard prioritising some data lanes when one channel for graphics is enabled.

 

So I agree that Chrome is going to use your current graphics device.

[TudorFinalBosz]

Quote

cpu decoding youtube videos

Not sure, but I believe the video decoding/encoding facilities on the CPU are a special instruction set, I don't think it has anything to do with the iGPU. It's not about rendering, it's about fast high-throughput data processing for this specific, data-intensive case.