Where should I plug in my monitor -- Motherboard or Graphics card?

Question

Assuming I am using the following equipment...

• motherboard with HDMI/DVI & no embedded graphics
• discrete graphics card (nVidia or ATI) on PCI-E slot
• Intel CPU with integrated graphics

...where should I plug my monitor into the computer?

Presumably, I'll get the fastest speed on games connected directly to the graphics card. But there is also power savings when connecting to the motherboard and accessing the Intel on-board graphics.

I've read that some motherboards can switch automatically between the Intel graphics and discrete graphics. Is that something that works well, and where do I connect the monitor to enable that?

Answer 1

It depends on what family of motherboard you have.

If you have a a P series (which disables the onboard graphics totally) plug it into the discrete graphics card.

If you have a Z68, H 61 or H68) series, its a bit more complicated - you need to install a piece of software called virtu which lets you use both at once, and switch off the discrete graphics as needed.There's a small performance drop when this is done, apparently. You should be able to get virtu off your motherboard's driver website.

If you're using virtu, you'll need to plug your monitor into your onboard video card.I'd suggest confirming this with your motherboard and software documentation however, since i've gone off reviews in writing this answer - i wasn't aware that virtu worked on H series motherboards.

There's a little more information on virtu here which confirms were you plug in the display out on the motherboard, and it goes into some detail on the install process, and has some benchmarks

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Well its 2024. Virtu's dead but you can run discrete and integrated GPUs together with the correct bios settings on most modern PCs. I'm currently running one of my displays on the integrated graphics, and the rest on the discrete GPU.

Windows 10 and 11 will render applications on whatever GPU the monitor is on unless set explicitly

Answer 2

You read it wrong about switching graphics cards - just there was some Atom graphics from Nvidia which could switch off and on while system worked. If you plug external graphics card internal card switches off.