OpenMW using wrong GPU

[TisIPickles27]

So I've seen a few other threads on this but the fixes either didn't work for me or the threads are abandoned before a fix is found.

Morrowind vanilla doesn't recognize my dedicated GPU. It isn't listed in the video settings in the vanilla launcher. I got OpenMW because I had heard that it can fix this problem. I've tried everything I can find out there to get OpenMW to use my dedicated GPU but it still is stuck on my integrated graphics. I'm on an Acer Nitro 5 Windows 10. Here's some specs:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Integrated GPU: AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 8 Graphics
Dedicated GPU: Radeon RX 560X Series

I've tried setting OpenMW, Morrowind, and the launcher to High Performance both in my AMD Radeon software (the new software is horrrrrible btw) and in the system display settings. No dice. Is there a way I can force OpenMW to use the dedicated card? Huge bummer to be getting 10 fps in any city in the game. This is also the only game in my steam library that won't let me force the dedicated GPU in system settings which I find pretty odd. Thanks for any help, I can provide any extra specs if needed.

[AnyOldName3]

I don't think we've ever had reports of this from someone with dual AMD graphics, either because it works for everyone else or because such systems are pretty rare, so I don't know which buttons you need to click to fix this except for an Intel+Nvidia system. Can you explain what exactly you've tried, please? Hopefully we'll notice something that seems off.

[TisIPickles27]

Sure, well when I got OpenMW I tried a fresh install. Even before installing OpenMW my GPU is not available to use from the morrowind launcher. So after installing OpenMW it was still running on my integrated GPU.
-I went into the AMD Radeon settings (basically Nvidia control panel) and set both morrowind and OpenMW to run on high performance (that should switch the GPU, it works for other games).
-Did settings>display>graphics settings and also set everything to high performance in there. That has always worked for any other game that didn't cooperate with AMD Radeon settings but no luck here.
-Tried messing with the graphics settings in OpenMW, reducing them didn't give me any boost in FPS.
- Sometimes my laptop will automatically switch GPUs if a program has low performance, so I also tried boosting the graphics settings a lot in the hope that my laptop recognized it needed to be using the dedicated GPU. Still nothing.
-Made sure all my power settings were set to high performance when plugged in.

I've heard some people say that certain AMD cards have trouble with Morrowind and that using OpenGL can help but I couldn't really figure out how to make that happen.

I'm pretty stumped by this one, so thanks for replying so fast.

[AnyOldName3]

The original engine always uses Direct3D 8.1, and OpenMW always uses OpenGL, so there's not a setting for that which you can change.

One possibility is that when you start OpenMW through its launcher, your drivers are seeing that its parent process is the launcher, so use the settings you've set in your driver for the launcher (which presumably wouldn't exist as there'd be no reason to set any). Maybe setting the launcher to prefer the dedicated GPU might help.

[TisIPickles27]

The original engine always uses Direct3D 8.1, and OpenMW always uses OpenGL, so there's not a setting for that which you can change.

One possibility is that when you start OpenMW through its launcher, your drivers are seeing that its parent process is the launcher, so use the settings you've set in your driver for the launcher (which presumably wouldn't exist as there'd be no reason to set any). Maybe setting the launcher to prefer the dedicated GPU might help.

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. The morrowind launcher settings issue seemed like a possibility to me too, I re-installed everything and made sure not to import settings from the morrowind.ini file, still no luck. As far as I see in the OpenMW launcher there's no place for me to select a different GPU. There's a select screen option but the only thing I can select is "screen 1". Is there another way to do this in the OpenMW system files or something?

[psi29a]

Well... I have laptops with hybrid iGPU/dGPU intel/nvidia. In nvidia's tools there is a sort of whitelist thingy that says which application should use which GPU. I think win10 made that more generic.

Something like this?
https://winaero.com/set-preferred-gpu-apps-windows-10/

For developers:
https://forum.qt.io/topic/98308/forcing ... rd-in-qt/5

Qt doesn't have any idea about hardware, everything is left up to the drivers. There are however OpenGL extensions that can be checked and iterated over though... just no sure what to do with them.

[TisIPickles27]

Well... I have laptops with hybrid iGPU/dGPU intel/nvidia. In nvidia's tools there is a sort of whitelist thingy that says which application should use which GPU. I think win10 made that more generic.

Something like this?
https://winaero.com/set-preferred-gpu-apps-windows-10/

For developers:
https://forum.qt.io/topic/98308/forcing ... rd-in-qt/5

Qt doesn't have any idea about hardware, everything is left up to the drivers. There are however OpenGL extensions that can be checked and iterated over though... just no sure what to do with them.

Yes I have Morrowind, OpenMW, and their launchers all set to high performance both in my windows system settings and in my AMD Radeon settings (equivalent to Nvidi tools). No luck there which is why I was hoping for some sort of way to force the game to use it through system files (wasn't sure that was a real possibility).

Huh, I'll have to look into the OpenGL extensions... I did find one other forum post out there the other day (I'd link it but I can't seem to find it now) where Morrowind wasn't running on a new AMD card because the drivers weren't compatible but the OP ended up fixing it by installing OpenMW. Does anyone else know some more about the OpenGL extensions? I'm gonna try to use this OpenGL Extension viewer I found but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for...

[AnyOldName3]

There's not anything you can do with that information as a user. As developers, we might have been able to do something, but we use SDL to create an OpenGL context, and so it would require SDL using one of the functions from those extensions to do so, which it doesn't. There's one other thing we could maybe try that might work, but that might take some time.

Just to check we're not chasing our own tails here, why are you so sure OpenMW's running on the wrong GPU?

[AnyOldName3]

As a quick test, when this build has finished building, if you use it instead, do you see different results? https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/-/jobs/970415842

[TisIPickles27]

As a quick test, when this build has finished building, if you use it instead, do you see different results? https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/-/jobs/970415842

Awesome this worked for me! Thank you so much! To answer your earlier question I could see in task manager and my AMD control panel that my dedicated GPU was completely idle while my integrated graphics was chugging along at 100% usage. Now that's fixed, getting 60 fps in balmora which I had 10 fps in earlier! Thank you tons! I'm gonna install some other mods and get playing, if anything conflicts I will post an update. TY again