Do you want to get the most out of your life? It is possible if you focus on the right strategies and techniques. By learning how to get the most out of it, you will be able to make the most out of every minute and reach your full potential. Here are some tips on how to make the most of your time and energy to get the most out of life.
The integrated GPU has experienced a very important evolution over the last decade, both in terms of performance and support for key technologies. This evolution has allowed it to become an increasingly powerful solution, and has reached a point where it has even managed to outperform certain dedicated graphics solutions.
Thanks to that evolution, and to all the improvements that have taken place in the industry, an integrated GPU is no longer an underpowered option whose capabilities are limited to basic office automation, web browsing and multimedia. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we have said, there are solutions on the market as powerful as the Radeon 680Mwhich is capable of running current games in 1080p and medium quality, or even in high quality depending on the requirements of each title, with a good frame rate per second.
I know what you are thinking, that that is a very specific case and that not all integrated GPUs are as powerful as the Radeon 680M. This is true, but it is impossible to deny that the evolution that integrated graphics cores have gone through. has been very positiveand that even today’s more modest solutions offer quite competent performance in many scenarios.
Let’s go with a more modest example, the Radeon Vega 7an integrated GPU that is present in the Ryzen 5 5600G APU. This is capable of delivering good performance in demanding games with 720p resolution, and in undemanding games with 1080p resolution, as long as we adjust the graphics quality levels. If we talk about previous generation games with this GPU we would get a very good result, as they are less demanding than the current ones. Nowadays there are many games that you can enjoy without problems with an integrated GPU.
All in all, it is important to keep in mind that the same integrated GPU can deliver very different performance on two seemingly identical computers.. There is an explanation for this, and it is that this component has a significant dependence on numerous factors that have a lesser, or even zero, impact when we are dealing with a dedicated graphics card. Knowing this is essential to understand how it works, and to be able to take the appropriate measures to get the best possible performance out of it.
On this topic we are going to talk about in this guide, where we are going to share with you a series of tips that. will help you to get the best possible performance from your integrated GPU. If you follow them to the letter, and apply them correctly, it is very likely that you will achieve a big enough performance improvement to gain a few FPS and get a superior gaming experience. As always, if you have any questions you can leave them in the comments.
1.-Keep your integrated GPU drivers updated.
An integrated GPU uses its own drivers, just like a dedicated GPU, and it is very important to keep them up to date because these are, in the end, the link between the graphics core and the operating system and the applications or games that we use. This simple description allows us to understand why they are so important.
If we are using outdated drivers we may have poorer performance in games and applications, or even experience graphics and stability glitches. With Windows running as a service, and being updated frequently, this issue becomes even more important, as we may reach a point where we experience compatibility issues with the latest operating system updates if we are neglecting GPU drivers.
Both Intel and AMD, which are the major players in the embedded GPU industry, tend to release new drivers frequently, and these can be downloaded and updated for free via the official websites of both companies. The new drivers may bring small performance improvements, as well as bug fixes and stability improvements. It is important, however, that you follow a number of precautions when updating your integrated GPU drivers:
- Only install drivers that are in their final version, i.e. that are fully stable, no beta drivers.
- Only use official installation sources (Intel and AMD websites). Do not install drivers from third-party websites, you may end up downloading malware or adware.
- Make sure that the drivers you are going to download are the right ones for the integrated GPU model you have, and for the operating system you are using.
2.-Upgrade the working frequencies of the integrated GPU.
One of the easiest, fastest and most effective ways to increase the performance of an integrated GPU is to raise its operating frequencies. This can be especially beneficial for GPUs that use an architecture that scales well with each extra MHz.such as AMD’s RDNA and RDNA2, and we can do this safely even if we don’t have an advanced user profile.
For Intel integrated GPUs the most common way to overclock has always been through the BIOS, adjusting the multiplier to raise the frequency.. To avoid stability and temperature problems, the ideal is to make small increases and perform stability and performance tests, accompanied by temperature measurements, and keep increasing the multiplier values until we reach that ceiling that we could cross without having to touch voltages. The tool Intel Extreme Tuning also allows you to overclock the GPU.
With AMD Radeon integrated GPUs. we can resort to the Ryzen Master toolwhich will allow us to adjust the key parameters of the graphics core in a simple and safe way, and we can also overclock it from the BIOS by configuring “GFX Clock Frecuency” manually.. This value will appear in “Auto”, so we will have to choose one of the values listed or enter the one we want. Depending on the value we enter, we may have to modify the voltage (option “GFX Core Voltage”) manually. Ideally, do not exceed 1.35V.
Since an overclock too high or misconfigured. can cause serious problems it is important that you are very careful, and that you make small frequency increases and run tests to check stability and temperatures before increasing the speed again. Also be clear about the default values of your integrated GPU, both in terms of frequencies and voltage, so that you can return to them manually if necessary, and to know at what level a particular overclock would be worthwhile.
Also, remember that a very high overclock with insufficient voltage can cause crashes, blue screens and reboots, and that very high voltage will lead to very high temperatures, can accelerate GPU degradation and may also lead to stability problems and irreversible damage.
3.-Use high performance power mode.
The power mode that we use can directly affect the performance of the equipment, because in the end it determines the amount of power that each component can access. In the case of the integrated GPU, the integrated GPU has a turbo mode that scales depending on the workload, and which can also change depending on the temperatures and power it can access.
If we use the low power mode the performance of the integrated GPU will suffer because it will have lower power, and the turbo mode will scale much less aggressively. We have already said that there are architectures that scale particularly well with a rise in frequencies, and these also have the same thing happen to them in reverse, i.e., they lose quite a bit of performance when their operating frequencies are reduced.
Choosing the right high-performance power plan can make a significant difference in the overall performance of any PC, and Will positively affect the performance of the integrated GPU.. The difference may not be very big in some cases, but you know that in the end it all adds up, and it’s all about taking steps together to maximize the performance of that component.
To change the power plan we just need to press the Windows key and type. “Edit Power Plan”. We enter the first result and select the option “Change Power Configuration”.. Once there we choose the high performance option, accept and that’s it, we are done. We will be able to change the plan again at any time by repeating these steps.
4.-Enlarge the RAM, activate the dual channel and increase its frequency.
RAM plays a key role when we talk about integrated GPUs for a very simple reason, and that is that they lack dedicated graphics memory, so they they resort to RAM memory to use it as VRAM.. This means that its performance will be deeply affected by the amount of RAM we have, by its configuration and by its working frequencies.
If we have a low amount of RAM memory the overall performance of our PC could be seriously affected, since. a part of it will have to work as VRAM and the remaining amount could be insufficient. to run certain applications and games. For example, if a game needs 8 GB of RAM and at least 2 GB of VRAM we will have problems if our PC has an integrated GPU and only has 8 GB of RAM, since it will use 2 GB of memory as VRAM and will leave only 6 GB free to be used as RAM.
I’m sure that simple explanation will have helped you understand why the amount of RAM is so important for an integrated GPU, but we still need to look at two more keys, speed and dual-channel. Both determine the total memory bandwidthand this data indicates the speed of communications between the GPU and the memory.the faster it is, the better performance it could offer.
Ideally, in this case, we should have dual channel enabled, because this will make the memory work with a 128-bit bus and greatly increase the bandwidth compared to the 64-bit bus that we would have in single channel mode. As for the working frequencies of the memory, ideally it should operate at least at 3,200 MHz.
I give you an example to make it clearer. If we configure two DDR4 modules at 3,200 MHz in dual channel an integrated GPU will have a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/swhereas with the same memory in a single channel configuration the bandwidth will be reduced to 25.6 GB/s. The difference is huge, which is why dual-channel is so important when we talk about integrated GPUs.
5.-Be aware of your limitations and act accordingly.
It is important to be clear that, in the end, an integrated GPU has limitations that it will be impossible to overcome, and that this will not be able to deliver the extreme performance that you would expect from a dedicated graphics card. This is quite normal, since integrated graphics and dedicated graphics have very important differences that affect the maximum performance that each is capable of delivering.
Knowing these limitations can help us maximize the performance of our integrated graphics because, in the end, we will have very useful information that will allow us to configure games and applications intelligently. to avoid unnecessary performance penalties or those that provide little value. For example, there are certain settings in games that consume a lot of resources but hardly improve graphics quality, and others with which the opposite is true.
Continuing with the example we gave at the beginning, the Radeon 680M integrated GPUs use a very advanced architecture and. feature cores for accelerating ray tracing.but this technology is so demanding that does not make sense in this type of graphic solutions. They also support FSR 2, and FSR 2 can help improve performance a lot as it reduces the graphics overhead by using a smaller amount of pixels.
A top-of-the-line integrated GPU will be able to work with 1080p resolutionsbut activating FSR 2 in quality or balanced mode will be an excellent option to gain a few frames per second. In the case of less powerful models, the 1080p resolution will be too big for them, and the ideal will be to opt for lower resolutions, or use the FSR 2 in “aggressive” settings, which will make everything pixelated in excess. Setting the graphics quality level will also be essential for fine-tuning performance.
The settings that most affect the graphical quality of a game are, in order from highest to lowest, resolution, texture quality, shadows, lighting, edge smoothing and anisotropic filtering. When using an integrated GPU setting the texture quality to medium is usually the best choice, but lights and shadows will probably have to go to low quality to maintain good smoothness. Anisotropic filtering has little impact on performance, and the same is true for FXAA edge smoothing.
6.-Free up resources, close background applications and activate Game Mode.
All of this can be useful when moving in configurations that are quite limited. because closing applications and freeing up RAM can make a considerable difference in these cases. Game Mode can also help us, because it has an “optimizing” role as it not only frees up resources, but it also allocates them with priority to the most important components when it detects that a game is running.
To close background applications we just need to press the Windows key and type. “Task Manager”. We choose the first result, go to the “Processes” option, do the following right click on those that we want to close and that’s it. If we want to activate the Game Mode we press the Windows key, type “Game Mode”. and enter the first result. Once there we check the corresponding box and that’s it.
I can confirm that the Game Mode makes a small difference in some cases. This difference can be of between one and three additional frames per second. I know it’s not much, but when we move into the 20 to 25 FPS range. it all adds upand in the end it will help us to reach our minimum target which, in this case, should be 30 FPS. With this level of fluidity it is possible to play many games and we will enjoy a console-like experience like we would have with PS4 and Xbox One.
I have also found cases where Game Mode does not improve performance, some punctual ones where it comes to reduce it, so. I recommend you to test in each game with which configuration you get better results.and activate or deactivate this mode accordingly. This way you will get the best possible experience depending on each specific game.