Minecraft is using Intel GPU on laptop

These days many Intel based laptops have two video cards: one that built-in in CPU and much better one. This happens because Intel is not capable to making nice GPU and as result these notebooks works just fine in Windows, but their performance is quite bad for most of the games.  Unless of couse you are willing to sacrifice everything in graphics quality. And as result of that manufacturers add secondary, much better GPU, so their customers can play games. AMD has much better GPU in their APU and usually they don’t have second GPU.

And I was asked to check why Minecraft is quite slow on such Intel based laptop. Firstly, I would like to check if Minecraft in fact using Intel CPU. In modern versions of Windows 10, it is possible to monitor GPU load in Task Manager, on Performance tab. And There is possible to see all video cards and their load.

And on that system, I could see that Intel GPU has 100% load, while AMD R7 M270 has zero load. Later I found that it is possible to press F3 in Minecraft and it will show GPU it is using. From my past experience I know that it is necessary to assign proper GPU for that game. Unfortunately, latest AMD software for that video card does not have anything like that. There is game list and I can add games to it and that is it. Minecraft were still using Intel GPU. I spent quite some time and then I did remember that very often laptops have special drivers. So, I went to Dell site and downloaded “latest driver” dated 2015. That version had place where you can assign “High Performance” option to specific applications.

And I thought that problem solved. But unfortunately, even after I assigned “High Performance” to Minecraft Launcher.exe and javaw.exe, Minecraft was still using Intel GPU. After I spent about hour playing with different options, I finally started search in Internet on how to assign GPU for specific application. And I could not find anything useful. Finally, I decided to install back latest drivers from AMD website. And again, I was not able to find any way to state that Minecraft should use AMD GPU.

Finally, I realized that I was searching for wrong thing. Instead I started search for how to assign dedicated GPU specifically for Minecraft. I found few ideas but none of them work. Then I put limit to return only results from last year. For Google there is Tools menu under search string when page is displaying results. Last year is necessary because AMD did 3 major redesigns of their application in last 5 years.

And finally, I found what I was looking for. It turns out, that for Minecraft you can specify GPU directly in Windows for latest version of Windows 10. Type “GPU” or “Graphics Settings” and Select Classic app in combo box and then click on Browse button and select Minecraft Launcher.exe. Then repeat the same steps for javaw.exe and start Minecraft and problem solved.

I hope it will help someone.