I recently purchased a Lenovo Legion laptop with the same specs as in this PCMag review.
However, I was disappointed to find that the fps for my three.js animations was far short of my target of 60fps. The GPU usage indicator in my programs seemed to oscillate in a wave-like pattern and the Lenovo GPU usage indicator showed nothing. Some of the three.js demos also malfunctioned.
After some research, I learned that the Lenovo has several GPU “Working Modes”. The default mode tries to make use of both integrated and dedicated graphics cards. I eventually discovered that the only way to solve the above problems was to select the dGPU mode. Once done, everything seems to be working fine.
Is that the recommended solution for Lenovo owners working with three.js or other graphics intensive applications?
Is there a way for a three.js program to force Lenovo and other machines to switch to the dedicated graphics card when the integrated graphics card (whatever that is) is not up to the task?
dGPU mode essentially makes use of both integrated graphics cards and dedicated installed GPU’s based on any given current workload of tasks, this should usually work fine however can be limiting in terms of some graphic display settings, for instance when you open Chrome initially it’s power consumption is relatively low until you need the processing power, however, as it was not opened with a sufficient amount of resources to process complex 3D scenes I think it’s bound to this default state (can’t “hot reload” the GPU it’s using).
If you want full control over your preffered default GPU you can either set dGPU off in bios globally, using only the GPU you select there across all system processes, otherwise, as it looks like you have an Nvidia GPU, you can open the Nvidia control panel and setup both the global default graphics settings as well as on a per program basis, eg you can select chrome / Firefox / any other browser from the dropdown and completely customize what hardware the particular software should use.
Thanks for describing these additional options.
For a universal solution, it seems that setting the browser preferences might be the most helpful. How is that done with Chrome?
Select chrome, go through the graphical options and power resources you’d like to use and hit save (remember this process for other applications that may be laggy in resource intensive scenarios)
There has been updates on this from win10 to win11 so it depends on your OS and architecture but you can find the correct method for your system online, on the latest win10 the Nvidia control panel prompts you to navigate to “windows graphics settings” to configure these preferences.
Would also recommend getting Nvidia app, formerly “gforce experience” where you’ll get the latest studio drivers for your micro beast
PS: as an added note, order a good laptop stand, you’re only true limit with this setup is thermal throttling in terms of graphic processing
