Will enabling my on board graphics reduce performance?

[FredJr]

Hello,

I have 2 GTX 980's running in SLI and four monitors. I wanted to use my 4 monitors + an HTC VIVE but 980 only supports 4 monitors. I thought I could fix this with enabling my on board graphics via bios and plugging in one of my monitors in the mobo's HDMI. However, I've noticed some FPS loss on a game I usually play at 60 FPS regardless of the situation (Battlefield 4). Did enabling the on board graphics affect my performance? can it even?

Thanks!

 

[panathas]

I suppose you have an Intel CPU. Yes, it can reduce performance for two reasons.
1) When you enable the on-board GPU it increases the power consumption and heat output of the whole CPU package, thus the CPU will have fewer TDP headroom to reach its maximum turbo boost clock.
2) You have to keep in mind that every GPU needs drivers in order to work properly but drivers eat CPU clock cycles and increase CPU usage and now you are using two completely different drivers that use eat a lot of your CPU.

Both of those reasons can affect performance but it also depends on your current CPU, how many cores it has and how strong it is.