gfxCardStatus

Any where I can read on forcing to use the iGPU on MBPs when plugged in at compile time to be used for the runtime of an application? I figure there are some speed ups/power savings i can get when running an emulator when i'm not too concerned about fps (and way more concerned about lag between from usb input). [edit] nvm, I can use this: https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus

right - I've had a look and I found https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus. I cloned it and then compiled it with xcode. I found one problem which is a badly encoded file, which I fixed using the file inspector to set the encoding and then saved it. After that it built and runs. On my 16' 2020 MBP it allows me to turn off my 5300M. When I open WOW it refuses to allow the card to be turned off, its web site says that's what it will do with an external monitor too.

Yeah, disabling the discrete card made a huge difference to my laptop's stability (also 2010 15" MBP with NVIDIA GT 330M). There's an open-source app called gfxCardStatus [0] that lets you switch between integrated and discrete from the menubar. On 10.12 the original app doesn't work properly, but one of its forks [1] fixes the issue. [0] https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus [1] https://github.com/steveschow/gfxCardStatus/releases

On a related note, I've been looking at GPU switching on Macbooks, mostly to get it working better on Linux. This work might also be useful to keep 2011 MBPs with a damaged dedicated GPU working with just the Intel card. If you have a 2011 MBP and are willing to spend some time developing a software workaround that at least lets you use it with Intel only, check out https://github.com/ah-/gmux-scripts/issues/1#issuecomment-68... and https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus/issues/150