Intel/AMD Switchable Graphics - Is it ok to install latest drivers from AMD website?

[treecheetahdolo]

Good Afternoon guys.

I have a problem with my laptop. Im trying play a few different games and emulators and for some reason they arent detecting my AMD 6770m GPU even though I assigned those games and emulators to High Preformance in the Catalyst Control Center. Of course Ive searched the web and HP's forums for answers but the only thing Ive seen was to install some custom drivers (which I prefer not to install). 

So my question is. Is it ok to install the latest drivers for my Intel and AMD GPU's from their own websites instead of installing the ones provided from HP? Would that solve my problem?

Im asking this because I bought this laptop specifically to play my favorite games and the AMD 6770m supports those games. But honestly whats the point of having this better GPU if I cant use it? 

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

treecheetahdolo

Generally speaking, the answer is NO.

The drivers on the AMD site are designed to work with dedicated graphics chipsets, not with switchable graphics chipsets.

Sometimes, they DO work, but that is the exception, not the rule.

And the problem is, if yours is one of the more general cases, after you install the drivers, you will get a BLANK screen -- and that will make it VERY HARD to do any repair, since you can't see anything on screen.

If you want to EXPERIMENT, then you must be prepared to do an image backup of your PC to an external drive or large USB stick and also create a boot USB.  These will enable you to then boot into WinPE (not Windows) and restore your current system from a backup.

If you're interested in going that route, then read on ...

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 10 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinRE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.

[treecheetahdolo]

I can definately agree on your post. Its kinda tough though that some of my games and emulators dont actually detet my high preformance card with the drivers HP has provided. Its going to make me think twice again before buying another HP product. Whats even more baffling is the games that are detected and supported by my high performance GPU sometimes lag and thats just unacceptable when buying a product thinking its compatible with some games and it really isnt.