Check your browsers’ Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) [Update Feb 2021]
Recommended settings to ensure your browser is using your dedicated graphics card.
Step 1: Check Current Video Card Used By Browser
Launch the URL in your browser: https://webglreport.com/
Identify the graphics card used by your browser.
In the below example you can see that the browser uses the integrated graphics card (from Intel) as opposed to a dedicated one (for example NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M)
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Step 2: Check Available Graphics cards
To identify your dedicated video card, type dxdiag in the Run Window (windows+R)
On the diagnostic tool, you can refer to the dedicated graphics card installed on your system.
In this example, the system has an ‘Nvidia, GeFroce GTX 950M’ graphics card installed. But chrome is currently not using this dedicated card.
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Step 3: Set up your browser to use the dedicated graphics card
For Nvidia Graphic Cards:
To set Chrome to use your dedicated graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce), search for Nvidia Control Panel from the start menu.
Go to Manage 3D Settings
Change the Preferred graphics processor from ‘Integrated graphics’ to ‘GeForce’.
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Note: If you are unable to change, or your driver is old (see the below image to check for version date) , you may need to download and install a new driver.
Once the driver is updated,
Open the Nvidia Control Panel again and change the Preferred graphics processor to ‘NVIDIA processor’
Open windows Graphics Settings,
Browse for ‘Google Chrome’ and select high performance.
Relaunch chrome.
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Step 4: Confirm the Graphics Card used by your browser is updated
Once the above is done, check https://webglreport.com/ (Step 1) again and confirm that the dedicated (In this example GeForce) card shows up instead of intel.
Additional System Settings:
For optimal performance, it is also recommended to set the power settings in windows to be performance-oriented instead of power-saving.