question on automatic graphics switching setting

I have an early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro that has the suspected graphics card issue. I had it updated to Sierra, and it started with graphics issues. Tried removing the AMD kext files and made a mess out of it. Then i had a brain storm of an idea on thursday night when i was supposed to be sleeping.... to put the ssd drive i had laying around in my old early 2009 white MacBook i had laying around collecting dust and take it to the apple store and put 10.10.5 on it. brought the MacBook home, took the ssd drive out of it and installed it in my 2011 early MacBook pro and see how it acts. used it all afternoon and evening yesterday and off and on during the day today and now writing this post with it with out an issue so far. decided to look at about this mac to see what it showed for graphics and it shows the amd graphics card. decided to investigate further and see that the box in energy saver in system preferences for automatic graphics switching is empty so it looks like it will not switch gpu's. my question is if i decide to upgrade to Sierra or even High Sierra when it comes out if the settings it has now will remain the same or will it change since it will be upgrading on a machine that has 2 graphics cards? if the settings will remain the same, i may put the larger ssd i have in my white macbook and go back to the apple store and have them install el capitan on it since that is the latest that machine can run and then swap drives again. would like to not have to go that route unless i have to.... or since yosemite seems to be behaving maybe just leave it alone.

Download the app called "gfxcardstatus"...and you can control the video hardware switching with it.

- Nick

I had that on the other hard drive the machine came with, now maybe the original os was corrupted and all i did was upgrade it to Sierra, but that is when issues started. so far after my "brainstorm" thursday night about sapping drives it has been working fine. but when i ran gfxcardstatus before i didn't uncheck the box in energy saver so that may have been the issue before too. so far it has been perfect but i have only put the laptop asleep when i was done with it too. have not tried multiple shut downs and reboots either yet.