Rapid Battery drain on Windows computers using Hybrid Graphics

Hybrid-Graphics is a concept involving two graphics cards on the same computer. Laptop manufacturers have developed new technologies involving two Graphic Cards with different abilities and power consumptions on a single computer. Hybrid graphics have been developed to support both high-performance and power-saving use cases. In this post, we will identify the cause and then offer the solution to the issue of rapid battery drain when you use Windows on a system that supports hybrid graphics and display to an external monitor.

Fast Battery drain on Windows PC using Hybrid Graphics

Let’s look at a typical scenario where you can encounter this issue.

You use Windows on a system that supports hybrid graphics. You use an NVIDIA graphics processor unit (GPU) to display to an external monitor.

In this scenario, you may continue to see the rapid battery drain for 2 minutes or more.

This issue of rapid battery drain when you use Windows on a system that supports hybrid graphics and display to an external monitor, occurs because the dwm.exe (is the window manager in Windows that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render the graphical user interface of Windows) process continues to reference the discrete GPU (dGPU) even after a video or DirectX application ends and the external monitor is unplugged – Windows continues to maintain power to the dGPU.

Update Windows and Device drivers

Update Windows and Device drivers to the latest stable versions.

Run Power Troubleshooter

If you’re faced with this issue, you can run the Power Troubleshooter and let it check for and automatically detect and fix Power issues.

I hope this helps!