Windows not recognizing onboard graphics!

[Schlossice]

Hi! I'm an all time newbie to the Mac world and I just purchased a Late 2013 Macbook Pro 15" Retina with the dual GPU in good faith that it would be able to run Windows with both onboard and dedicated graphics (switching between them depending on the load - just like in OSX).

Instead, Windows only recognizes the NVIDIA 750m GPU which results in less battery life and much more heat dissipation. So I was just wondering if this is a well known problem or if it's just me?

If anyone has any experience with this issue, do you know if there's any fixes and would OSX also be affected if I ran 'Parallels'?

I really hope that some of you are able to help!

Thanks!

 

[merrickdrfc]

Don't quote me on it, but I don't think Windows can switch graphics natively like you can on OS X. Whether there is any way round this with drivers I'm not sure.

Running Windows via Parallels won't help battery life at all, it probably defaults to the dedicated GPU and you're running a VM which will use more battery anyway as you're running two OS's.

 

[Schlossice]

Alright damn, thanks for the fast reply!

Another question: I've read something about NVIDIA Optimus, which should work like the function in OSX, but does anyone know if Optimus is able to run on Bootcamp windows? And if the Iris graphics isn't registered under "Devices" it probably won't be able to switch between the two GPU's?

 

[yjchua95]

Alright damn, thanks for the fast reply!

Another question: I've read something about NVIDIA Optimus, which should work like the function in OSX, but does anyone know if Optimus is able to run on Bootcamp windows? And if the Iris graphics isn't registered under "Devices" it probably won't be able to switch between the two GPU's?

On Macs with dGPUs, when you boot into Boot Camp, the EFI will disable the iGPU. There is no workaround for this.

So you can forget about Optimus.

The only way to get Optimus working is to setup an NVIDIA eGPU on an Iris-only MacBook.

 

[dusk007]

Don't quote me on it, but I don't think Windows can switch graphics natively like you can on OS X.

Windows can and supports even multiple ways of handling multiple GPUs. It can keep independent GPU drivers running but Optimus is usually the best way. It is just a graphics driver that sits in front of the real graphic drivers so the operating system has only to deal with one driver and in the background it can seemlessly switch GPUs any which way.
OSX switching is worse because the two drivers support different things. There is no seemless switching unless a program has two code paths for each built in and can handle the context switch. Usually when higher gpu functions are called a framework is loaded for the active GPU or always the dGPU and you cannot switch back until it is unloaded again.

For unkown reasons Apple disables the iGPU entirely on its notebooks for Windows. If the GPU was visible a optimus driver would work even without official Apple support. But they prohibit it still for some reason. People tried to look for workarounds but there was none ever found.

Parallels will run on the IGP if you force the Intel GPU with gfxCardStatus(a little free tool) before launch of Parallels.