diff --git a/transformer_engine/pytorch/attention/dot_product_attention/utils.py b/transformer_engine/pytorch/attention/dot_product_attention/utils.py
index 9ee6ad0101..c31d27cc53 100644
--- a/transformer_engine/pytorch/attention/dot_product_attention/utils.py
+++ b/transformer_engine/pytorch/attention/dot_product_attention/utils.py
@@ -1082,6 +1082,13 @@ def _is_fa3_supported(num_heads, num_gqa_groups, head_dim_qk, head_dim_v, qkv_dt
         if use_flash_attention_4 and FlashAttentionUtils.v4_is_installed:
             logger.debug("Disabling FlashAttention 4 for dropout")
             use_flash_attention_4 = False
+        if use_fused_attention and qkv_format == "thd":
+            # Dropout keeps thd off cuDNN's unified engine, so it falls to the much slower
+            # composite one. Nothing else reports this.
+            logger.debug(
+                "FusedAttention with dropout and qkv_format = thd uses the composite cuDNN"
+                " engine, which is much slower than the unified engine"
+            )
 
     # Filter: Softmax type
     # context_parallel | softmax_type | supported backends