Chrome causing GPU to switch to discrete card? Why?

Chrome relies heavily on GPU acceleration. You could just use GFXcardstatus to control which GPU is being used.

 

Are you using chrome partly because its faster? You now know why b

 

It's generally flash plugins that cause the card to switch. This can be somewhat mitigated by selectively enabling plugins.

 

you can also change this behavior in chrome://flags

 

Apple's so called automatic switching is just a broken pretty poor implementation. It doesn't switch according to need and it cannot switch back once the application is running. It effectively switches as soon as one app might potentially require the faster GPU for best performance.
Say you run Chrome and since Chrome initializes certain frameworks that it can use to run some HTML5 3D games it switches on the dGPU. Even if all you do is browse news sites and read text. The same with Flash.

The only work around its using gfxCardStatus and force the intel GPU. I do this always when on battery. Pretty much always when I am in OSX and not using an external screen.
iPhoto triggers the dGPU even if all you do is slide through a few photos or import some. Stuff the iGPU is more than capable of handling.

 

Try installing the Flashblock extension in Chrome. That'll take care of the pesky flash ads that are probably doing it. You can still see flash content by clicking on the flashblock overlay.

 

I use gfxcardstatus to do so.

 

Chromium doesn't trigger discrete, just wait for the work to filter to the release Chrome build, or just use Chromium...