Premiere 2019 still refuses to utilize dedicated GPUS on dual-GPU laptops
I'm running a Surface Book 2 equipped with a GTX 1060 and Intel integrated graphics. While I have had no issues forcing Premiere Pro 2018 to utilize my GTX 1060, Premiere Pro 2019 simply will not do so, regardless of the actions I take to try and force it to do so. Some users seem to have been able to resolve the issue on desktops, but I have had no such luck on my laptop
The options to enable hardware acceleration and CUDA rendering in Premiere 2019 DO appear, and all the boxes are checked--but Premiere 2019 still defaults to using my CPU for all tasks.
I have tried:
--Ensuring the GTX 1060 is the only GPU Premiere 2019 should be able to utilize via Nvidia Control Panel AND Windows 10 graphics settings. (This workaround usually works for other applications).
--Attempting to manually update drivers directly from Nvidia, and ensuring CUDA is enabled on the GTX 1060. (I am not sure how much of a difference this actually made as I'm pretty sure the SB2 defaults to OEM driver updates from Microsoft.)
--Ensuring that Hardware acceleration and CUDA rendering are enabled in Premiere 2019
It seems from my research is that the issue is that, on dual-GPU devices, Premiere 2019 always defers to GPU 0. A logical solution would be to enable a way for users to select which GPU they would like to utilize.
But again Premiere 2018 works just fine with my GTX 1060, even without being able to select GPUs. This issue was added to Premiere 2019 and has NOT been addressed since it launched. So I'm stuck using Premiere 2018 if I want to actually use my device's hardware--which is frustrating when I pay for the features in Premiere 2019. There's also a good chance that many users don't even know that Premiere isn't using their dedicated GPU, if they're not looking out for it. I feel like this should be a priority fix.
Happy to provide any info that could actually help solve this issue.

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Kevin S commented
I have the exact same issue. Premiere Pro 2018 worked perfectly. Premiere 2019 is completely and totally useless now. Have created a new project with 2019, updated drivers, spent many hours trying to get this to work and have come up with nothing.
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Kyle Plumadore (Adobe) commented
Premiere should prefer the nVidia GPU over the Intel GPU for any GPU effect rendering it needs to do. Do you have GPU accelerated effects on your timeline ? What's your use case? Are you encoder/decoder bound? (Note that quick sync will be used for h.264/h.265 encoding/decoding which will show up as usage on the integrated GPU)
I've also heard some people having luck with creating a new project in 2019 instead of opening an existing project.