First of all, hello to everyone, I've been following the community for quite a while, but never had the need to post before. I have a small issue that I hope someone can help me shed some light on.
I own a mid 2010 MCP (i5 2.4GHz, nVidia 330M version) and ever since I upgraded to El Capitan, I had issues with my gpu. I would have several apps open, and whenever I tried closing one using Cmd+Q, my mouse cursor would disappear for several seconds. I realized that it wasn't frozen, you could move it, but it would simply be invisible. At first I thought that I wouldn't mind it and ignored it, but after a while it really started to annoy me so I started googling for an answer. I quickly found out that my model is known for its notorious GPU kernel issues (
) and that every time I was closing an app the WindowServer process would spike to 100% CPU usage for several seconds, the same amount of time my cursor was nowhere to be found. The problem was that a lot of the everyday apps (mainly Chrome) were using the nVidia card when in fact they should have been using the Intel card. One of the suggested fixes was to try out the nVidia Web Driver and see if that would change anything.
But, ever since, I noticed that only 1 GPU can be active once the computer is booted. As in, I am using the Intel graphics and if I turn on a certain app that should use the nVidia one (Hearthstone for example) the Mac keeps using the Intel card. If I try to switch to the nVidia GPU I would be asked for a computer restart in order for the switch to take place. My question is, is this the expected behavior with these drivers, that I should restart the computer in order to use the other GPU? Because if that's the case, the whole point of having 2 GPUs seems a bit pointless to me.
Thanks in advance
I own a mid 2010 MCP (i5 2.4GHz, nVidia 330M version) and ever since I upgraded to El Capitan, I had issues with my gpu. I would have several apps open, and whenever I tried closing one using Cmd+Q, my mouse cursor would disappear for several seconds. I realized that it wasn't frozen, you could move it, but it would simply be invisible. At first I thought that I wouldn't mind it and ignored it, but after a while it really started to annoy me so I started googling for an answer. I quickly found out that my model is known for its notorious GPU kernel issues (
But, ever since, I noticed that only 1 GPU can be active once the computer is booted. As in, I am using the Intel graphics and if I turn on a certain app that should use the nVidia one (Hearthstone for example) the Mac keeps using the Intel card. If I try to switch to the nVidia GPU I would be asked for a computer restart in order for the switch to take place. My question is, is this the expected behavior with these drivers, that I should restart the computer in order to use the other GPU? Because if that's the case, the whole point of having 2 GPUs seems a bit pointless to me.
Thanks in advance