All computers come with some sort of graphics card or an on-motherboard GPU chip. If you invest in a high-end gaming computer, then you will receive a powerful graphics card. However, these graphics cards consume a lot of energy and produce more heat than ordinary graphics cards.
On a Windows 11 computer, you can control whether an app will use your graphics card and to what extent. By managing these graphics preferences, we can minimize the unnecessary power consumption caused by some smaller apps. By default, Windows 11 automatically manages the graphics card usage for all apps. However, we can also modify the graphics preferences for any app in the following way:
- Launch Windows Settings by pressing the hotkey Win+I.
- From the Windows settings, select “System” and then “Display”. Next, choose “Graphics” from the “Related settings” section.
- In the “Custom options for apps” section, choose whether the app is a desktop or Microsoft Store app. Then, click the “Browse” button to select the app and add it to the list.
- Once the app has been added to the list, you can click on the “Options” button next to it to choose its graphics preferences.
- There are three available options: Let Windows decide, Power Saving, and High Performance. For most apps, you can choose Let Windows decide. If you don’t want the app to consume too much power, you can select Power Saving. If it’s a graphics editing, animation, video, or gaming app, then you can choose the High Performance option.
- Click the “Save” button to save your graphics preferences. You can repeat these steps for additional applications.
On the graphics preferences screen, you can choose to bypass these settings in the case of windowed games. These games include card games, chess, and pinball machines.