Arbitrarily, Win 11 will not connect to the GPU card but only the integrated GPU

nunya · Jul 21, 2023

Dru2 said:
Please check the back of your PC and make sure the monitor is connected directly to the 7900 and NOT the motherboard....

View attachment 65235

To use the 7900XTX the monitor needs to be connected to it, not the above.

Been attached here since day 1. Waiting on new monitor. My current is probably a decade old and only has HDMI and DVI, and from recent research, HDMI was never specifically labeled as a PC port, unlike the DVI. Regardless, been hook to the 7900 the whole time. should my system freak out, I'll post what Win 11 shows.

SlicEnDicE · Jul 21, 2023

bobkn said:
I don't know how it's managed on a laptop with dual graphics.

On laptops it's managed by hardware, firmware and driver support. And is important in order to conserve battery life. But it probably works a bit different than people may think.

Think of the dGPU as a secondary high performance 3D/compute accelerator card which only does the heavy calculations and the iGPU only spits out the result to the screen. Never does the dGPU blit anything to the screen on such systems. It's all handled by the iGPU.

SlicEnDicE · Jul 21, 2023

nunya said:
Been attached here since day 1. Waiting on new monitor. My current is probably a decade old and only has HDMI and DVI, and from recent research, HDMI was never specifically labeled as a PC port, unlike the DVI. Regardless, been hook to the 7900 the whole time. should my system freak out, I'll post what Win 11 shows.

Exactly what you made me understand from your initial post

nunya · Jul 21, 2023

So this is what device manage shows normally. The very first time I noticed significant slow down of anything video related, this is the first place i went and under display adapters, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX was NOT listed, only the Radeon(TM) Graphics was listed and yes, the HDMI was connected the the discrete GPU at the time. At first I thought this was a weird technology I never heard of, where they had some iGPU built onto a discrete GPU card. As such, it's the iGPU of the CPU that is listed as a display adapter along with the dGPU, yet on the 2 or 3 times this anomaly occurred, it only shows the Radeon(TM) listed in device manager.

Not that this clears anything up, but give some more info on what I see on my end.

Dru2 · Jul 21, 2023

nunya said:
Been attached here since day 1. Waiting on new monitor. My current is probably a decade old and only has HDMI and DVI, and from recent research, HDMI was never specifically labeled as a PC port, unlike the DVI. Regardless, been hook to the 7900 the whole time. should my system freak out, I'll post what Win 11 shows.

That you. BTW, when I posted that question I'd missed you'd actually stated you did that.

However, you also noted you disabled the iGPU and lost video so there's some confusion with your posts.

I'm also at a loss of how an incompatible? monitor can cause a GPU switch

I'd also suggested you disable the iGPU, but I see it's still enabled per your Device Manager image, so...

Are your sure the issue isn't actually the monitor???

At the end of the day we can only go by what you post and suggest accordingly.

Good luck.

bobkn · Jul 21, 2023

SlicEnDicE said:
On laptops it's managed by hardware, firmware and driver support. And is important in order to conserve battery life. But it probably works a bit different than people may think.

Think of the dGPU as a secondary high performance 3D/compute accelerator card which only does the heavy calculations and the iGPU only spits out the result to the screen. Never does the dGPU blit anything to the screen on such systems. It's all handled by the iGPU.

I'm tempted to make a sarcastic response to stating the obvious, but I'm trying to be a good forumite.

nunya · Jul 21, 2023

Dru2 said:
However, you also noted you disabled the iGPU and lost video so there's some confusion with your posts.

When I first had the occurrence, I went into BIOS and disabled the iGPU (while the 7900xtx was not seen in Win 11), mind you the 7900XTX was listed in BIOS. After disabling iGPU, rebooted, the screen was just blank, nothing. Back into BIOS, re-enable the iGPU, was able to get back into Win11, did a full restart and the 7900XTX came back online.

Dru2 said:
I'm also at a loss of how an incompatible? monitor can cause a GPU switch

Not implying that it is of any real consequence, but keeping everything transparent in the way of information.

Dru2 · Jul 21, 2023

nunya said:
After disabling iGPU, rebooted, the screen was just blank, nothing. Back into BIOS, re-enable the iGPU, was able to get back into Win11,

Yeah, that makes no sense to me. If the monitor is physically connected the 7900XTX, disabling the iGPU should NOT affect the video output of the 7900XTX. I.e. you should NOT be losing video there.

Definitely a strange issue. But again, no experience with AMD builds so... but it's still hardware.

jbcarreon123 · Jul 21, 2023

nunya said:
When I first had the occurrence, I went into BIOS and disabled the iGPU (while the 7900xtx was not seen in Win 11), mind you the 7900XTX was listed in BIOS. After disabling iGPU, rebooted, the screen was just blank, nothing. Back into BIOS, re-enable the iGPU, was able to get back into Win11, did a full restart and the 7900XTX came back online.

Did you cbeck your dGPU (7900XTX) being detected in the BIOS?

bobkn · Jul 21, 2023

Let's be clear.

If the monitor is connected to the discrete card, and the discrete is not detected, there should be no display.

Correct?

Dru2 · Jul 22, 2023

bobkn said:
Let's be clear.

If the monitor is connected to the discrete card, and the discrete is not detected, there should be no display.

Correct?

Correct.

For clarity's sake though... what do you mean by discrete card - 7900XTX or the iGPU?

Regardless, per the question, you are correct.

jbcarreon123 · Jul 22, 2023

Dru2 said:
what do you mean by discrete card - 7900XTX or the iGPU?

Discrete card means the GPU that isn't shared on the processor.

So, it's the 7900XTX.

bobkn · Jul 22, 2023

Dru2 said:
Correct.

For clarity's sake though... what do you mean by discrete card - 7900XTX or the iGPU?

Regardless, per the question, you are correct.

Standard usage. Not something particular to me.

And, I'd never refer to an iGPU as a "card", because it isn't one.

Dru2 · Jul 22, 2023

bobkn said:
And, I'd never refer to an iGPU as a "card", because it isn't one.

Fair point, but we need to make sure were all on the same page terminology wise

At any rate, I personally feel like some of the info the OP has posted seems contradictory at times. Example....

nunya said:
When I first had the occurrence, I went into BIOS and disabled the iGPU (while the 7900xtx was not seen in Win 11), mind you the 7900XTX was listed in BIOS. After disabling iGPU, rebooted, the screen was just blank, nothing. Back into BIOS, re-enable the iGPU, was able to get back into Win11, did a full restart and the 7900XTX came back online.

Going by "Intel boards" if the monitor is directly connected to the discrete graphics card, disabling (enabling) the iGPU would have zero effect on the discrete card's ability to output video. I.e. disabling the iGPU would NOT lead to a "blank screen" if the monitor was directly connected to the discrete card.

I have my monitor connected to my AMD discrete card and have the iGPU disabled in the BIOS and have zero issues with video. And even when I enabled, and later disabled the iGPU, still no interference or issues.

Are AMD boards doing something different? Would love to hear from "AMD" board, GPU, CPU "Desktop users" on this. I could ask around at the Gigabyte AMD forums but would love to hear from someone here.