Modern browsers often offload graphics-intensive tasks to the GPU to improve your web browsing experience, freeing up CPU resources for other tasks. If your system has multiple GPUs, Windows 10 can automatically decide which GPU is best for Microsoft Edge to use automatically, but that doesn't necessarily mean the most powerful GPU. Now, with the April 2018 Update (version 1803), you can manually select the default GPU that Edge uses to improve its performance.
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A new Graphics Settings page is available in the Settings app, allowing you to manage per-app graphics performance preferences. The best graphics card manufacturers like Nvidia and AMD have their own Control Panel apps with similar options, but now you can do this directly from Windows 10 Settings.
In this Windows 10 guide, we'll walk you through the steps to force Microsoft Edge to always use the most powerful graphics processor with new options available starting with the April 2018 Update.
- Open the settings.
- Click on System.
- Click Display.
- Click the Graphics Settings link.
- Use the "Choose an application to set preferences" drop-down menu and select the Universal application option.
- Use the second drop-down menu to select Microsoft Edge.
- Click the Add button.
- Select Microsoft Edge from the list.
- Click the Options button.
Choose the high performance option. Select the Battery Saver option if you want to reduce performance to save battery.
- Click the "Save" button.
After completing these steps, open Microsoft Edge, which should now use your computer's discrete graphics card for rendering tasks.
If you end up running into issues, such as high GPU utilization or other performance issues, you can also use these steps to change your Microsoft Edge graphics preferences to troubleshoot and fix hardware acceleration issues. Keep in mind that rendering issues can also be caused by other issues, such as graphics driver issues. If this is the case, you'll also need to update your video card drivers to fix any graphics issues.
If you want to revert your changes, or run into other issues, you can always follow the same instructions, but in step 5, make sure to click Microsoft Edge's Remove button.
Original link: Forcing Edge to use a discrete graphics card—BimAnt