I recently bought an HP Spectre with a pretty nice NVIDIA card in it. I was excited to put this to good use on some 3D modeling. However, I noticed some weirdness with Chrome. Regardless of turning on all of the GPU / Acceleration settings it was just underperforming. Even chrome was reporting that the GPU settings were on “sort of” but it wasn’t really identifying where the GPU settings were coming from. It was just giving me a general GPU performance stack. I know what V-8 can do so I just didn’t accept this.
After some digg’n I noticed some “interesting” things. The GPU settings for Chrome are prebuilt into the NVIDIA control software. So its a preset. Even though the preset is there though that doesn’t nec sync with the browser itself. Suppose you install your video card, and software, first and haven’t even installed Chrome yet. How would the control handle applying the preset operations for a software that wasn’t even there? Indeed, this is the case. Try to “remove” the settings and then “add” them back? Nope. Does nothing. The settings are there in the INVIDIA Controls but they are not working. This is what works:
1.) Step 1 - create a copy of your chrome.exe. Just literally copy it into the same folder and keep the default name the OS provides of “chrome - Copy.exe”. Usually it’s in the “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application” folder.
2.) Open the “chrome - Copy” browser to be sure it opens. Just trust me on this. If you rename the exe and try to open it sometimes Chrome will give an error and the copy wont open. So just make a plain copy and don’t try and rename it.
3.) Open your INVIDIA control panel and navigate (left-side nav) to “3D Settings / Manage 3D Settings” Now tab over to “Program Settings” on the main content area. Click “Add” and “browse” to the folder location of your “chrome - Copy.exe” and select the exe.
NOW the GPU will actually apply the 3D Settings to the Chrome browser and you will notice your performance jump incredibly. In essence you’re giving the control panel a new chrome exe to open and apply the settings to, instead of the preset one.
I hope this helps. I sure didn’t know about it. I find it ironic that on the same OS as Edge Browser that a manufactures OEM preset is bugged in a way that actually prevents the default installed executable of a competitors software to be operational. Oh well, now we know! I’m sure someone from Google will want this fixed pronto!!
P.S. - Oh Yeah, I almost forgot to mention - every time Windows applies one of their unwanted updates you will need to repeat these steps.