Adjust Hybrid SLI Settings Under Power Options on Windows 7

I was working on my new laptop and have been having some crashes. After analyzing some of the dump files I determined that I was having some video driver issues. When I first got the laptop I remember setting the hybrid sli mode to high performance.  After deciding I should probably switch this setting back to the default mode I was not able to find the option to switch it back. I couldn’t remember how I set it in the first place so I did a little googling and it told me there should be a GPU section under the advanced section of power settings.

Well when I looked at my power settings I could not find the GPU options. I knew I had set this up somehow but since I found a lot information about how the GPU was supposed to be under the power settings, I decided to embark on the quest to figure it out.

Turns out its disabled by default in Windows 7 for some reason. I wont speculate as to why but I wanted mine back. Generally when some thing that used to exist disappears, I look in the registry to see if its been simply disabled.

I found the setting and low and behold one of the values was HidePowerSetting and it was set to 1 which is true. I changed it to a 0 and it gave me the GPU settings I was looking for.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Open Regedit by typing it in the search bar.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Hybrid
3. Change the entry HidePowerSetting so that it’s value is 0
4. Restart your computer

Once you do that you can open up your power settings and adjust the settings.

To find your power settings:

1. Open the control panel
2. Locate and open power options
3. Select change plan settings for whichever plan you are using currently.
4. Select change advanced power settings
5. Scroll down till you see GPU and change your settings

I’m sure there is another way but I like to find hidden settings and enable them so this hack was a win.