By default, Windows 11 uses the CPU for every app to improve performance. This happens completely automatically.
However, in some cases you may want to dedicate the GPU to a particular app to improve performance. The GPU is the video card. This is especially recommended if you are playing a computer game where you suspect that the graphical content could be better than what Windows is currently using.
A GPU is optimized for concurrent processing, meaning they can perform many simple calculations at the same time. This makes them ideal for tasks that require processing large amounts of data quickly, such as image and video processing, machine learning and computer games.
Assign GPU to application instead of CPU
In Windows 11, after selecting an application, you can improve performance by choosing between “Let Windows decide”, “Power Saving” or “High Performance”. You can set this up for a specific app as follows.
Open the settings. Click on “System” on the left and then on “Display”.
Then click on “Graphics” at the bottom in the “related settings”.
To apply the custom graphics settings for a particular app, you need to add that app (the executable file *.exe) to the list.
To do this, click on the “Browse” button and select the app whose graphics performance you want to change.
Once you have added the app, you will see this app in the list. Click on it and click “Options”.
You now have three options. You can let Windows decide whether to use the CPU (Default) or GPU for this app.
You can apply energy saving. This limits the performance of the app, for example when you are not using the app and background actions are not running.
If you choose “high performance” you allocate the GPU (video card) to this app. This will generally improve performance for just this app. I have explained some of these benefits in the intro to this article.
Click “Save”. After this, you may need to restart the app whose graphics preferences have changed.
I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading!
Also read: Which video card does my computer have?