Victus 16 Laptop - Driver Issues

[SergeiKarola]

Hello,

This will be a very long thread so ready your drinks.

I've got a Victus 16 laptop, which is brand new. However, after installing Windows, I encountered many issues with it.

Firstly, despite the laptop's design capacity being 70kWh, the battery's full charge capacity is only 62.8kWh.

Secondly, the Hybrid Mode, which can be toggled from both the OMEN Gaming Hub and HP BIOS, has never worked correctly for me. Theoretically, this mode is best for both battery consumption and battery life since it uses Integrated GPU to save power when doing light tasks while switching to Discrete GPU if needed when gaming or using graphics-intensive apps.

I have had constant crashes using Hybrid Mode and even got a blue screen with the error named "VIDEO_TDR_EROR" under the name "igdkmd64.sys". The Discrete GPU constantly woke up on Hybrid mode even when I was idle on the computer. This resulted in a 2-hour battery life since the Discrete GPU adds at least -18W to the charge rate. In total, the charge rate was around -40W. Normally, the charge rate on Hybrid mode should be around -5W to -15W on Healthy Laptops.

I have tried a clean Windows 11 Pro 23H2 installation with the latest drivers. Later, I disconnected from the Internet and used an app called DDU to remove both INTEL and NVIDIA drivers on safe mode since Windows never installs the latest drivers. I then installed the latest drivers for both INTEL and NVIDIA, but the Integrated GPU driver kept crashing. The problem persists despite having a fresh Windows installation and the latest drivers.

Removing the Integrated Graphics driver fixed the crash issue, and I could use my computer without crashing in Hybrid mode. However, I faced the downside. Removing the Integrated Graphics driver on Hybrid Mode, resulted in many apps such as Netflix, low quality, and terrible frame-rate playing videos, and no brightness slider on the laptop's display. Also, the problem of the Discrete GPU waking up was never fixed.

Up until now, all the problems I have faced occurred in Hybrid Mode. I tried using Discrete Mode, which is the most stable for my laptop since I've never had any crashes or stability issues on Discrete Mode. The downside of this was having an average charge rate of -25W, which resulted in a 3-hour battery life. Yes, using Discrete mode over Hybrid mode gave me better battery life.

I have already requested a refund, but I felt like creating this post since there may be other individuals who have had the same experience and require answers.

There is one thing that should not be missed. When installing Windows on my devices, I make sure to turn off any network connection and skip certain bloatware and Windows updates from installing. I have noticed that before turning on my network connection and installing any drivers through Windows Update, the estimated battery life for my laptop was 5-6 hours according to Windows. There was no single stutter or any crashes on Hybrid mode until I connected to a network and applied all the Windows updates. I believe that some drivers from the Windows update may cause issues with the whole operating system. I saw many other threads with similar problems similar to mine after having applied the Windows update. However, this is just an assumption.