High VRAM demand but in fact verly low GPU requirements

[Deadly-Bagel]

Also, please don't buy laptop to play games it's just trouble ... from power and cooling issues, to driver problems, because every laptop with dedicated GPU has some technology for switching between integrated and dedicated GPU, which requires drivers from two graphics vendors to cooperate on some level... just no.

Unless it's an Asus Republic Of Gamers series.

I run an Asus G752:

ASUSG752

Okay, maybe it's technically a "mobile desktop" instead of a laptop (or at least my old G73 was) so maaaaybe doesn't apply to your statement, but still =D

[Lee_newsum]

The game can export 2 variables to hint the drivers that it requires high performance.
...
But it looks like factorio already does this, so it's strange that it isn't working.

I don't know if it's working or not for Factorio, not many people complain about it being launched on wrong GPU nowadays. But it's just a hint, driver can do whatever it wants. I was talking about general case ... if these problems on "gaming" laptops would be isolated to Factorio, than it's obvious we are doing something wrong. But if these problems are common across several games and mostly don't happen on desktops, I don't think the issues are cause by games being buggy.

I am just not fan of switchable graphics technology in gaming laptops, that's all.

if you run in to this on a desktops most likely it is a system you have built and as such you look for fixes. the internet solution is to turn off the intel graphics in the BIOS (like I have.) but doing on a laptop is hit and miss.

Back to the topic in hand I think Factorio is unique in that they are making a game that they like and not a game to fit a average system requirements this runs the in to bottlenecks that hardware manufacturers can not anticipate like 4GB of VRAM on ok GPU's . a average game on a average system is not written to use it

[HurkWurk]

the only bug "feature" i have ever ran into with modern games and nvidia cards thats annoying is adaptive power saving. because it will occasionally down clock the GPU and cause the game to stutter or drop below 60 UPS, only to then clock back up the GPU and be smooth again.

its fixable however, in the nvidia control panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings tab > pick the games that cause this issue (for me its world of tanks, Diablo 3 and Factorio) and scroll down to "Power Management Mode" and set it to Prefer Maximum Performance.

99% of the time this solved stuttering issues for me in these games because it disallows the video card from going to idle. (500mhz instead of ~3100mhz)

[Xeorm]

Yea, it comes from how they do their graphics compared to other contemporary games. Sprites are VRAM intensive. It comes with the territory. But, Factorio does keep the non-hd textures it's always had, so if you've got an older graphics card you should be fine.