Minecraft on your Nvidia Optimus laptop

by Teh KillerBee 18. January 2011 16:46

Hey all!

I just wanted to share this small tip of mine, to all of you having trouble running Minecraft on your Nvidia Optimus based laptop. This feature is meant to save on the battery, when you are running less demanding applications by using the onboard Intel graphics, and then kick in with the Nvidia GPU when this is needed, fx by 3D intensive games or in our case Minecraft. The problem is Minecraft ONLY using the onboard Intel HD Graphics card instead of using the much more powerful Nvidia card.

This is, however, about to change Smile

Most of you have probably already added the "Minecraft.exe" file to the Nvidia Controlpanel, but this did not help. The reason this happends is because the "Minecraft.exe" works as a launcher for the built in java client you have installed on your computer (javaw.exe).

The java client is not listed as being a 3D intense application. Therefore you need to add the Java Client to the Nvidia exeption list instead:

1) First you need to locate the javaw windows binary. This is usually located in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin" folder for those of you running the x86 version of java on your x64 windows 7 installation.
If you run the 64-bit java version on 64-bit Windows 7 OR the 32-bit java version on 32-bit Windows 7, this file will be located in this folder instead "C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin" (Pretty obvious, huh Cool)

2) Go to your Nvidia control panel, and choose 3D Settings -> Manage 3D settings (as shown in the picture below. Click to see larger image)

3) Click the 'Add' button to add a new program to the customization list, and browse to the folder where the javaw.exe file is located & select the javaw.exe. (This location depends on your operating system, but it should be pretty easy to find)

4) Select the preferred graphics processor from the list. In this case, we need to use the High-performance NVIDIA-GPU, so select this one.

5) Click 'apply'

6) You are now done! Everytime you launch minecraft, your NVIDIA Optimus laptop will choose the correct & powerful GPU instead of the dreaded Intel HD GPU *shivers*

Hope this works out for you! Please comment if it did, I would appreciate that Cool

UPDATE!

Some of you reported that this method does not work after installing the newest nvidia verde notebook driver (275.33)

Im not sure why, but this is what I did to make it work:

1. Add the javaw.exe file to the list again, since the settings are cleared after installation of the new driver!
2. Remove the javaw.exe file from the list
3. Add it again. Make sure, that you choose the NVIDIA GPU
It should now work again, it did on my laptop anyways Cool

See you all next time!

//KillerBee

Comments (26) -

Random Dudeson
Random Dudeson Germany
3/18/2011 10:13:00 PM #

I love you for this Laughing
Really, thank you, kind sir.

Reply

Teh KillerBee
Teh KillerBee Denmark
3/18/2011 11:05:44 PM #

Np, im glad I could help Smile

Reply

Ibrulz
Ibrulz United Kingdom
6/5/2011 9:03:44 AM #

Awesome! Thanks for this. Bought a brand new laptop for my best friend and it can play Dragon Age 2 on full but freaks out with Minecraft just for this reason. Massive help. Cheers!

Reply

Adam
Adam United States
6/9/2011 3:30:11 AM #

I can't thank you enough.  I just dropped $750 on, what I thought, was a good mid-range laptop for playing games.  Minecraft is the first thing I installed and it ran absolutely terrible.  Did some googling and landed here.  This fixed the problem and it now runs perfect on "fancy" graphics and far render distance.  Thanks so much!

Reply

Teh KillerBee
Teh KillerBee Denmark
6/9/2011 11:45:18 PM #

Np, im glad i could help, im surprised how many who are experiencing problems w/ those laptops! Smile

Reply

mraviation10
mraviation10 United Kingdom
6/21/2011 10:50:34 PM #

guys - i tried this and it worked fine but then i did nvidia driver update to 275.33 and now it's gone back to using the rubbish intel hd graphics. can anyone help?

Reply

Admin
Admin Denmark
6/23/2011 3:13:01 PM #

Are you sure you have set the settings correctly? Can you change between NVIDIA and Intel GPU in other games? If you cant, then it is probably a buggy driver.. My suggestion would be upgrading to a beta driver instead.. oh remember to update the Intel HD driver too!

I have not tried minecraft on my optimus laptop w/ the newest drivers, but I'll try updating to it soon and see if I have the same problems! BTW what laptop are you using?

Reply

nmdrkangl
nmdrkangl United States
6/29/2011 4:56:41 AM #

Thanks so much! this was very very helpful!

Reply

Kleptine
Kleptine United States
7/1/2011 1:49:13 AM #

I'm having the same problem as mraviation10. I just updated my drivers and it seemed to stop working. I'll try a beta driver I suppose.

Reply

Admin
Admin Denmark
7/4/2011 1:10:02 PM #

@mraviation10 and @Kleptine

Im not sure why, but this is what I did to make it work:

1. Add the javaw.exe file to the list again, since the settings are cleared after installation of the new driver!
2. Remove it.
3. Add it again

It should now work again, it did on my laptop anyways Smile

Reply

Mlarsson
Mlarsson Sweden
7/10/2011 5:18:46 PM #

THANK YOU VERY MUCH YOU ARE MY HERO !!!!!!!

Reply

TFBeyond
TFBeyond United Kingdom
7/17/2011 1:42:11 PM #

Awesome, thanks!

FPS just jumped from 8 to 98 Tong

Reply

Nebster
Nebster United Kingdom
7/19/2011 7:38:24 PM #

Hey,

Just thought I'd mention that with the new drivers, you can just right click on it and say "Run with graphics processor" -> nvidia

Nebster

Reply

Teh KillerBee
Teh KillerBee Denmark
7/19/2011 9:12:00 PM #

@Nebster, yeah this menu is available with all the Nvidia Verde Notebook drivers - even the old ones, but because it only starts the Minecraft.exe executable and not the java client, this method certainly did not work with the older drivers!

Can you confirm that this method actually starts minecraft with Nvidia too? Smile

Reply

elephant boy
elephant boy United States
7/31/2011 8:40:42 PM #

Thank you sooo much. I knew I didn't buy a $2000 notebook to play a pixelated game at slow speed!

Reply

Adam Ch
Adam Ch United Kingdom
8/5/2011 1:47:11 AM #

Thanks I was trying to figure out how to fix this

Reply

Connor
Connor Canada
9/3/2011 8:22:37 PM #

Is this 100% safe?

Reply

Admin
Admin Denmark
9/3/2011 10:09:50 PM #

Yep, it is meant to be used like this. You are meant to add games to this list if they dont work out of the box.

Reply

Connor
Connor Canada
9/3/2011 10:25:13 PM #

Is this 100% safe?

Reply

Patrick
Patrick United States
10/11/2011 4:32:28 AM #

So just got a lenovo thinkpad w520 and have added javaw.exe and java.exe to the nvidia's optimus list but still no luck Frown

Any help would be appreciated

Reply

Word_Wizzard
Word_Wizzard United States
10/13/2011 11:34:11 PM #

After simply installing the OptiFine mod and trying Game Booster, I went from ~30fps idle to specs of ~120-150pfs idle. These plus this = awesome. =]

Reply

james
james Australia
10/21/2011 12:46:10 PM #

i tried this myself before i went searching and found only this solution so i did a bit more playing around.  i did the same for java.exe and now it is using the nvidia card

hope it works for you

Reply

Ze1ss
Ze1ss Romania
10/29/2011 9:57:14 PM #

Man i have to say, it was a pain in the ass this problem. but now works great Laughing thx for the tip

Reply

mraviation10
mraviation10 United Kingdom
12/31/2011 5:17:47 PM #

my solution to the problem : i use a laptop dell xps and when i did a driver update, the java preference stopped working.
the reason : because i use a monitor and therefore the laptop gets confused

Therefore, if you have used the monitor, u want to restart your computer and unplug the monitor

Hope this helped someone...

Reply

vindieseL
vindieseL Bulgaria
1/1/2012 8:25:04 PM #

Omg!Omg! I just can't believe it...I was trying to fix my lag days after days and when I came here ...I followed these few thing and now i don't have any lag ... Thank you so,so,so,sooooo.... much !!!!

Reply

Joseph Hines
Joseph Hines United States
4/16/2012 4:32:03 AM #

I'm having trouble with this. Every time I hit the fullscreen button it's causing minecraft to crash, and only when it uses the nvidea card.

Reply

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About me

I am the ~20 year old Johannes (aka. Teh KillerBee in various forums and games), a computer geek from the small scandinavian country called Denmark, self-taught in programming & electronics.

Some of my interests are hacking & working on different projects (both hardware & software) and also electronic music in various forms. Electronics engineering is also a great interest of mine, and hopefully I will be able to make a living at this in the future Smile

I will use this blog as a way of telling you about the different projects and problems I work with every day while (hopefully) entertaining, helping and maybe inspiring you in the process Cool

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