7690M GPU = HP HORRIBLE DRIVER SUPPORT

[Ricardo-Sahobo]

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CJacksonLASD wrote:

Yes I had the same problem.  The HP drivers are based on 11.2 Catalyst drivers from 2010.  However they were never designed for the 7000 series, only the 6000 series.  Long story short HP hasnt propperly developed the 7690 drivers to work with their hardware setup. 

Download the AMD Catalyst 12.2 drivers, as soon as I installed those drivers all games work perfectly fine on higher settings.  Hope it all works out for you.

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Well, if you would look deeply, you can see that the AMD 7000M series is a renamed ATI 6000M series?

When ATI merged with AMD, they got a chance to make a little more money....by renaming the ATI 6000M series to the AMD 7000M series, yet they had no change in them, same hardware, same everything, just a new sticker.

So yes, it would only be logical that they use the same drivers.

[Alex_G]

Hello, guys. I had the same problem with ATI drivers.

Unfortunately HP doesn't respect its customers concerning updated video drivers for notebooks like dv6 series with switchable graphics. Because up-to-date drivers for gaming video cards being a must is common knowledge. And it seems that HP contracted with ATI cheaply, not paying them for up-to-date support. At least that's how it appears to most of the HP laptop owners who tried to run recent video games for which our laptops are actually engineered, priced and perfectly capable hardware-wise. Only half-year or even older drivers are available from HP and it is huge for gaming industry. I've been on HP forums for several months already, since I got my dv6-6169er with a 2GB Radeon 6700M, and nobody from HP argued with what's written above. Guess why.

I always respected and will respect HP products, but next time I will look to other brands as well.

For now, IT-enthusiasts help us. Like this Russian guy: http://leshcat.blogspot.com/ His packages work well and are up-to-date. However you have to disable driver licencing in windows. Manuals are linked on the right side column in his blog. Do it at your own risk.

It you wish to download from official ATI website, try beta and pre-certified versions. Like this http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystSoftwareSuiteVersion122PreCertified.aspx It is compatible with our notebooks if you install it on top of official HP drivers (don't uninstall stock drivers), it will update all ATI components. You can get links for such versions from CatalystCreator twitter http://twitter.com/#!/catalystcreator This nice guy is employed with ATI and provides links from time to time.

With either method you keep switch option just like in stock drivers.

Don't forget to update BIOS to latest version from HP. Updated BIOS has an option to switch graphics card manually. I set this option to ATI card in Catalyst Control Center when updating drivers.

Drivers for all components other than graphics card seem to work well in stock version, so no need to update anyhing else, at least for me.

Sorry for my English as I am from Russia.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards, Alexander. A faithful HP customer for over 7 years.

[JotaCL]

Oh yes... Finally a solution, let's test this drivers!

Thanks Alex_G!

[egeek84]

well i'm in a weird spot.

Device manager shows me having the AMD 7690M XT but i'm using Catalyst 12.2 which identifies the card correctly but has it at 800hz.  

When I try to update it to 12.3, it doesn't update anything.

This is all so messy.  A customer shouldn't have to go through these weird steps just to have reliable up to date videocard drivers.

Now I don't know if I can ever update again.  I am confused as to which drivers I should get from where.  Nothing is being done.

[JotaCL]

Leshcat drivers improved all my games perfomance in like 20% and even more in others... So far no crashes/artifacts/freezes.

Battlefield 3 with all settings maxed out looks amazing...

[kmchow98]

Hi jota, Very cool! I think, as a long term solution, I am going to stop depending on HP to deliver drivers on this pretty capable gaming notebook. I'll try leshcat's solution. Btw, which version dd you use?

[JotaCL]

Last one, 12.3. Just be very careful! Read all the steps!

[kyang2453]

@jotacl under device manager does urs say 6600m and 6700m series or 7690m

[kmchow98]

Dilemma here.

I'm tempted to just use the 12.2 pre-certified drivers from ATI.

The leshcat approach seems to benefit Jota alot, and fixed his problems.

But I don't play too many games right now...

[VENOMs7000]

Yes. the new Catalyst 12.3 is even better. It fixes a lot of issue earlier versions had.

If you are a good observer you can see that 12.3 resolved a  startup delay issue ( now it starts up in 2 seconds with Windows).

Old driver (HP) vs new 12.3 ---- games run 20% faster and no glitches! 
Yes the drivers do rename the 7690 to 6700m (and lower clock to 800) but it still runs faster.

Maybe we can hope that soon new catalysts will be compatible to 7600m series and that way "re-rename" GPU to correct one. But no hurries


In short:

"Don't rely on HP anymore, don't buy from them anymore." We have good and capable gaming machines but 2010 old drives are slowing them down drastically.  

Follow Andrew D on twitter and keep up to date your self, since HP does not care. "HP Customer Care " xD