How do I know if my 6970 or HD 3000 is being utilized?

[kzeroro]

Hi Gang,

I just built an i5-2500K system for my stepson for Christmas. The motherboard is a Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3, with 850 watt Corsair Silver PS, 8gb Corsair DDR1600 (CAS 8) and OS hard drive is a Corsair 90gb SATA 3 SSD.

Can I force the system to run the HD 6970 (disable the HD 3000), or does anyone know of a hot-key switch to it if the system isn't changing when it should?

Thank you in advance,
Art

 

[016ive]

if you hooked the monitor to your GPU that means you are utilizing it if you hooked the monitor to the motherboard that means you are utilizing the HD 3000 of the i5 2500k there is no way to change that automatically

 

[jaguarskx]

When you install a video card the integrated Intel HD 3000 is basically disabled.

All you really need to be concerned about is connecting the DVI or HDMI cable from the Radeon HD 6970 to the monitor.

 

[nukemaster]

On a Z68 board, you can use Virtu with the onboard and dedicated. This is done by plugging into the onboard card and installing Virtu(it will copy the frame buffer from the dedicated to the onboard when it is using it), if you do NOT want to use it, just connect to the 6970. You can also go into the bios to disable it(HD 3000) or at least you can on the Asus boards(have not got to play with a Gigabyte Z68 yet).

On my Z68 board, they both run until i disable it. That said, if you are not on the onboard card(connected to the dedicated instead), your 6970 will do all the work

 

[kzeroro]

Thank you all. Yes, I finally read on the Virtu, and saw hot the output then is through the HDMI on the MB. Interesting way of doing things, but I also read a test/review of it, and it seemed to have problems knowing when to use the discrete graphics card.

Now onto the games forum. Using a Coolermaster N55, I think, he's running 60 degrees on core 4, and near 100% utilization, when playing Minecraft. It's apparently Java sucking the life out of that core, so onto find a solution.

Lesson? Never build a system for someone who lives in your house and just wants it to work...thank you again, and HNY

 

[nukemaster]

If a program is single threaded, it will do something like that, It should not be an issue, 60c is not going to kill anything.

I know Virtu did not let the dedicated play Just Cause 2(just crashed it, yet either card on its own would play it)