Intel IGP active and sipping 5w despite dGPU being used

[greatnoob]

Hi, I have noticed that when I go into the bios of my motherboard (Gigabyte Z87m-d3h) there is an option which disables the Intel iGPU.

I am running a dedicated Radeon R7 card and my only monitor is plugged into its HDMI port so I did not know if I should or could disable the iGPU. A Google search shows that many leave it enabled.

When the iGPU was enabled my idle temperatures were between 40-43 degrees Celsius with the stock cooler. GPU-Z showed the iGPU clock at 600mhz and memory at 667mhz constant. HWMonitor showed package power draw at 9w minimum.

I disabled the iGPU half an hour ago and noticed that the CPU temperature has dropped significantly. Core 0 would hover around 40 degrees celcius whereas now it as low as 33 degrees celcius. Idle temperatures have decreased by 1-2 degrees too. The package power draw has also decreased to 5.76w.

My laptop's iGPU downclocks itself when the dedicated Nvidia card is enabled, is it normal for a desktop's iGPU to be running at full clock speeds even when it isnt being used?

If I were to remove the dedicated GPU and use the HDMI slot from the motherboard, while the iGPU was disabled, would I still be able to boot into the bios?

Thanks!

 

[NTMBK]

What power profile are you using in Windows? Using "high performance" can sometimes stop things like the iGPU throttling down properly when not used.

 

[greatnoob]

What power profile are you using in Windows? Using "high performance" can sometimes stop things like the iGPU throttling down properly when not used.

It is in "Balanced" mode. Could it be the AMD Omega Driver?

 

[TheELF]

600Mhz is the downclocked speed, normal would be 1000Mhz and over,and the IGPU is working as an APU it helps with OpenGL/OpenCL and the likes and dont forget quicksync witch is always welcome for transcoding and game capture/streaming.
If it would power down completely it would be bad for performance.
(well only in a few things but still)

 

[greatnoob]

Would I still be able to boot into the BIOS if the iGP is disabled and no dGPU was on board?

 

[tortillasoup]

Would I still be able to boot into the BIOS if the iGP is disabled and no dGPU was on board?

probably not but there is only one way to find out.