How do I force my Windows 11 laptop (MSI Creator) to use the discrete NVIDIA over the integrated Intel Iris for an external Thunderbolt/USB-C screen?

Question

So, I'm usually a Mac (desktop) / Linux (VM / server) user, so I'm pretty lost in Windowsland.

I've bought the closest thing I could find to a Mac, that runs Windows: the MSI Creator series, specifically a Z17. It's got a very beefy GPU (NVIDIA RTX 3080), that I specifically searched out so that I could use a large array of external monitors and be more productive.

Unfortunately, I cannot, for the life of me, get three monitors to connect and work at the same time:

1. If the internal display is enabled, only one of the two external Thunderbolt screens will function;
2. but if I disable the internal display, both of the external screens will allow me to enable them:

After some investigation, I suspect the problem is that, no matter what I do, the new laptop appears to be "stuck" on the integrated Intel Iris graphics, instead of the NVIDIA GPU:

I've tried quite a few things:

1. Set a couple common apps to "High performance" in the Windows 11 settings, since NVIDIA says that's where you configure which-GPU-to-use nowadays,

   

2. Set "Preferred graphics processor" to "High-performance NVIDIA processor" in the NVIDIA Control Panel anyway, even though it says in there that it has no effect nowadays,

3. Launched a damn 3D game in the background just incase Windows ignored my configuration in #1.

No matter what I do, the "PhysX configuration" above continues to indicate that all of my displays are connected to the Intel Iris. No matter what I do, three monitors won't turn on at the same time.

One last confusing confound, though, is that in the Task Manager, the usage-graph for the GeForce RTX 3080 is way more active than the usage-graph for the Intel Iris; so maybe the NVIDIA Control Panel is lying to me? But in that case, why can't I connect three measely displays to this g/d laptop? /=

There are previous questions on this topic, but they're all ancient - windows 8, or whatever. Things seem significantly different nowadays, at least based on the settings-panes I've been exploring.

Answer 1

In order to fully utilize the laptop 3080 discrete gpu, you will need to use the dedicated HDMI port and an external monitor. ((your picture of the ports shows this)) All other graphics outputs run from the embedded gpu (Intel). Internally the cpu may utilize the discrete gpu for rendering etc, but then pass info back to the embedded gpu for the displays. This is why the discrete gpu shows high usage.