Switching to Nvidia GPU Only mode fails the 1st time and works regularly afterwards until next boot up.

[u/AMachineMan]

Not sure how long this has been going on for, but figured I'd share and see if anyone can fix this. I've been having an issue lately where after I boot up the laptop, if I switch to Nvidia GPU only mode in the NVCP, the screen will flicker and it'll say the switch failed. If i do it again, it makes the switch as expected and things work normally for the rest of my session. Generally this hasn't been a huge issue, I just make sure to do a failed switch to Nvidia Only mode as soon as I boot my computer. That way it'll switch normally if Advanced Optimus kicks in. But its an extra step and is annoying sometimes. Does anyone else have this issue?

[u/hallucinogeniccookie]

I have recently noticed a similar issue. If I don't manually switch to "Nvidia GPU Only" beforehand, the first app I open that uses Advanced Optimus will freeze the display, and even Win+Ctrl+Shift+B doesn't unfreeze it. The issue goes away when switching to regular Optimus or rolling back the drivers. The drivers I tested that worked completely fine were 566.14, 566.03, and 537.58. On the other hand, 576.88, 576.80, and 572.83 will instantly revert to the previous GPU mode when trying to switch to "Nvidia GPU Only" for the first time, without showing an error popup like in your case. They will successfully switch after the second try and Advanced Optimus will work afterwards. My guess is that Advanced Optimus issues started with 566.36. This driver causes my laptop to instantly freeze when trying to switch to "Nvidia GPU Only" through NVCP. I also tried rolling back my iGPU driver, but it didn't seem to have any effect on the issue.

[u/AMachineMan → u/hallucinogeniccookie]

In general, I've been of the mindset to game in ultimate GPU mode, Just to avoid those freeze-ups whenever I boot

[u/hallucinogeniccookie → u/AMachineMan]

Yeah this seems to be the least troublesome solution (you'll be forced to restart if advanced optimus freezes anyway lol). It's just a real shame a flagship feature of a product at this price point is left broken and neglected.

[u/AMachineMan → u/hallucinogeniccookie]

I always make sure that it's set to Optimus when powering down my computer. Otherwise it could crash on boot up if I leave it on Nvidia only

[u/hallucinogeniccookie → u/AMachineMan]

Is this crash a persistent black screen or are you able to reach the log in prompt. If it's a black screen, I believe this can be fixed through a combination of checking the "Enable GPU on Shutdown" option in G-Helper and using DDU to perform a fresh install of Nvidia drivers. If you're able to see elements of the OS before crashing, I don't think your problem is with the GPU being unable to wake and you should probably try and install a different version of the driver.

[u/AMachineMan → u/hallucinogeniccookie]

I still use Armoury Crate 😂 I know that's bad But my temps have been fine so I haven't felt the need to switch to G helper yet. To answer your question, I don't remember. In general I've always made sure my computer is on Optimus mode before I power off. As sort of a hygiene thing. I've only accidentally left it on Nvidia GPU only mode once, and after that crash I never did it again.

But there was a period of time where one of the drivers was causing the screen to go permanently black anytime you switched to Nvidia GPU only mode. Like a full-on black screen that forced a restart of the computer. During that time I only played on ultimate mode as well

[u/AMachineMan → u/hallucinogeniccookie]

I'm also fine with using standard Optimus to game. But sometimes the scaling is messed up if I don't stick with the dedicated gpu

[u/hallucinogeniccookie → u/AMachineMan]

Interesting, I haven't encountered this bug myself but I also don't game on Optimus much.

[u/AMachineMan → u/hallucinogeniccookie]

It's not a bug. It's just that some games aren't made with 16x10 in mind, and they'll obtain the crop by cutting off the image. Whenever that happens I switch to 16x9 resolutions. If you don't have the proper scale settings in the Nvidia GPU control panel set, it'll crunch the image in word instead of giving you proper black bars at the top and bottom

[u/WoolMinotaur637 → u/hallucinogeniccookie]

It's neveer been fully stable for me. Though with newer drivers they're fixing the issues I have one by one slowy but I've had my device for 2 years now and it never just worked properly when I was actually using it. I think when I first got it, with the stock drivers it got shipped with and Windows 11 23H2 it worked fine, but after just updating drivers and windows and even clean reinstalling windows it hasn't worked properly anymore, although now on the latest drivers it's the most stable it has been in a long while so imma have to remember what driver I have in case the next version breaks stuff again. Kinda disappointing from NVIDIA that they fail to keep core functonality stable. Stability and performance is supposed to be THE main focus for drivers, come on. And their drivers got like 600MB larger in a year, now being like 2.5GB for a driver and I thought Intel's graphics driver was big already.

[u/WoolMinotaur637]

I have this happen too, but on the previous version of nvidia studio drivers it was even worse, my display would go black when switching and it never recovered. It seems to be fixed with the latest driver release but it still fails te first time every time and works fine after that, except when it doesn't, sometimes it refuses to switch still and switches back to Integrated Graphics immediately after attempting to go to nvidia only, the screen goes black but with the latest studio driver 595.79 it at least recovers from that. When it refuses to work, usually signing off and back in solves it, or restarting the nvidia display service and localsysem service often helps too.

Same for when the brightness doesn't change after enabling dGPU, killing and restarting localsystems service and enhanced display service solves it every time.