How To Enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling In Windows 11

If you play games, you know that our PC performance sometimes drops when we play games with high graphics, and this is due to our GPU. We can fix this issue with an advanced setting called Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling, which can improve gaming and video performance with your PC’s GPU. Windows 11 comes with Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling, a feature that helps reduce latency and improve performance by allowing the graphics card to manage its memory. However, since this is still a new feature, you have to use the latest graphics driver from the manufacturer and only certain cards are supported. For example, Nvidia supports GPU scheduling with hardware acceleration starting with driver version 451.48, and integrated Intel graphics from driver version 27.20.100.8190. For an AMD card, you need a 56000 series card or later. Read the full blog to learn how to enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling and thus improve performance.

Hardware-Acceleration GPU Scheduler

A computer’s processor typically passes some visual and graphics data to the GPU for rendering to keep games, media, and other applications running smoothly. For that purpose, the CPU collects all the application’s frame data and assigns and prioritizes commands one by one so that the GPU can render the frame. With Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling, Windows 11 can now offload much of the GPU scheduler to a dedicated GPU-based scheduler engine. With GPU scheduling enabled, the GPU takes over the load from the CPU and reduces latency to improve your PC’s performance. If you enable this feature, the performance of applications that use the graphics card will improve significantly.

How To Enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling

Using Settings

The easiest way to enable or disable the Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling is through the Windows 11 settings interface.

• Open “Settings”. Click “Start” and click the “Settings” icon in the Start menu. Or press Windows + I.

• On the Settings page, click on the System section and select the Display option in the left pane, as shown in the screenshot below.

• In the Related Settings section, select the Graphics Settings option.

• In the Graphics window, under Default settings, click on Change default graphics settings.

• Next, enable the “Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling” and select “Yes” in the User Access Control window that appears.

• After that, your Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling will be enabled in Windows 11. You have to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

According to Microsoft, you may not see any significant changes right away. However, if this feature is reducing your computer’s performance instead of improving it, you can disable it.
To do this, go back to these settings and click “Change default graphics settings”. Then turn off the toggle under “Schedule hardware acceleration for GPU” and select “Yes” at the user access control prompt.
That’s it! You can check if this will improve your game and app experience on your Windows 11 PC.

Using The Registry

Although it is not the most intuitive method, enabling or disabling GPU scheduler hardware acceleration via the registry is still relatively simple.

• Open Start, search for regedit, and click on the top result to open the Registry Editor.

• Now copy and paste this path:
  (PC / HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SYSTEM / CurrentControlSet / Control / GraphicsDrivers) and navigate to the “GraphicsDrivers” registry key.

• Right-click the GraphicsDrivers (folder) key, select New submenu and click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
• Name the new DWORD “HwSchMode” and press Enter.

• Double-click the switch you just created and set its value to 2 to enable hardware GPU accelerated scheduling.

• Then click OK and restart your computer.

Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling should now be enabled on your computer. If you want to disable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling, you can use the same instructions and change the value of the HwSchMode key from 2 to 1. It will disable it.