I'm using an NVIDIA GeForce MX350 alongside Intel Iris Plus Graphics G1 on Ubuntu 26.04. Minecraft is only reaching around 16 FPS, and the system's resource monitor shows no NVIDIA GPU activity; video encoding, decoding, and power usage are all listed as N/A. I already tried switching to performance mode, but it didn't seem to help. How can I check whether the NVIDIA driver is installed and make sure Minecraft uses the MX350?
2 Answers
First check whether the NVIDIA driver is installed and whether the GPU is visible. Running `nvidia-smi` in a terminal should show the MX350, driver version, and current processes. You can also check the installed driver under the Additional Drivers section of Ubuntu’s software settings. On a hybrid Intel/NVIDIA laptop, the Intel GPU is usually used by default to save battery, so the NVIDIA card may appear idle until an application specifically launches on it.
The resource monitor showing N/A does not necessarily mean the NVIDIA GPU is broken. It may simply be idle, since the desktop and lightweight applications run on the integrated Intel graphics. Try launching Minecraft with NVIDIA offloading enabled, such as with `prime-run` if it is available, and then check `nvidia-smi` while the game is running. The GPU may only show activity during heavier workloads; if performance improved under load, that suggests it is being used normally.
I wasn’t sure how to check at first, but I’m running Ubuntu 26.04 and will verify the driver and GPU status with those tools.