How to install AMD driver for ATI Dynamic Switchable Graphics in Windows 7?

Question

I have a ATI Dynamic Switchable Graphics on a HP Pavilion g7 (hp pavilion g7-1246ef).

I had some graphics problems with this VGA card in Linux and I found (here) that I have this double-VGA type of GPU (if my terms are correct). I gave up using Linux on that PC but now I want to have a bit more control in Windows (7). The system works fine in windows, but sometimes the cooler gets noisy for minute tasks and I guess that is because the discrete card is used: I want to be able to control the way this works.

It seems that I have 2 VGA controllers:

• One on-CPU Intel for energy-efficiency
• One discrete card (an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6470M in your case) for rendering.

I searched here for the Catalyst Control Center utility (the one presented here)

But when I try to install the catalyst_mobility_32-bit_util.exe, I get this:

When I try to use the AMD Driver Autodetect (from here), the same error happens (although for some reason this utility chooses the 7xxxM series instead of 6xxxM series).

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Following Ramhound's comments, I searched specifically for an OEM driver (AMD driver modified by HP) and found (here only 64-bit version for Win7 and Win 8 versions. The Win8-32bit manager installs on the system but then reports that it cannot find any drivers.

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To sum up, the AMD Catalyst Install Manager can be installed from here (called "Latest AMD Catalyst™ Drivers for Radeon™ R9 200, R7 200, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series") but then it looks useless to me. I cannot run it, although it looks installed in add/remove list. The installation procedure has these stages:

But the folder C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies is empty!

What should I do?

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Can this be because of the Intel Graphics and Media Control Center which is installed?

Solution 1

Thanks to the advice given by and31415 (in the comments under other question) I was able to install the Catalyst driver and the Catalyst Control Center (and the rest of the Catalyst/AMD suite). The advice was to find first the harware's id.

(See - How To Find Unknown Device Drivers By Their Vendor & Device ID)

I will paste here the comments:

"The AMD card ID is PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6760&SUBSYS_1672103C&REV_00, which corresponds to Radeon (TM) HD 6470M. Despite the fact no 32-bit driver seem to be available, the 64-bit package actually contains both. Make sure to uninstall the current driver, restart, and then install the one provided by HP. As for the Intel card, the 32-bit package for Windows 8 is compatible with Windows 7 as well."

So, the driver and the CCC application that I had to install were those modified by HP (downloaded from here). As stated in the comment, I used the 64-bit AMD driver and the Intel Win8 32-bit driver on a Win 7 32-bit system. This also confirms the comments made above by Ramhound on using the OEM drivers.

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This is the answer to the present question.

However, I have to add that after a short while I noticed that the Catalyst AMD/ATI driver was taking a lot of resources, which made me doubt that I needed that in fact. It is intended for game playing and other intense use of the GPU, but I do not need that. In fact, I was just searching for a proper driver that would make the fans as quite as possible while keeping the system safe. The AMD driver and card are made for high-energy consuming tasks and the fans would by used more in such cases; so, fans were not quieter, on the contrary (one is incited by CCC to add more applications to the list of apps using the discrete card); while the Task Manager was showing oddly 6-7 instances of the ATI driver each using 25-50 MB of RAM (and that did not happen before).

The solution that works for now is:

• Keeping the Intel driver from HP (which is designed for Windows 8 but works in 7)

• Uninstalling the AMD driver and CCC from HP and using Windows update to install the latest AMD driver (there is no CCC there though). That brought me close to what I was looking for.

(For gaming and other GPU intensive use the OEM driver with CCC may still be the best solution.)

Solution 2

I had the same problem while ago.

I assure you that your AMD card is not working properly, even not showing any problems in device manager. The diference between me and you is that I am on a Dell computer.

What I did was installing the drivers from leshcatlabs. You will need to do a clean up first (you can find it under UNIFL>SUPORT>MANUALS).

Leshcat gets the latest AMD and Intel GPU drivers and does the bridge between them.

Dell's official drivers for switchable graphics are very outdated. Thats why I use Leshcat now. If you try any direct driver download from AMD website, it wont work properly!

Comments

[Ramhound]

Have you tried to use the driver release issue by the OEM?

[Ramhound]

Well Aero could be working because of the Intel drivers but why would you want to remove them?

[Ramhound]

Autodetect will only display drivers released by AMD directly not drivers modified by HP.

[Ramhound]

My last comment is crystal clear in that regard. If all it installed was a "checker" then you didn't install the latest drivers. You canot simply install the current version of AMD Catalyst and have switchable graphics work.

[Admin]

@Ramhound - "You canot simply install the current version of AMD Catalyst and have switchable graphics work". why shouldn't the latest AMD Catalyst provide "switchability" ?

[Admin]

@Ramhound - I have deleted the other question. I have tested the unofficial version from here as well as an older version from here but they behave just as reported. (Should an older driver work?) I find odd how the package (which is called a "driver") is in fact a sort of downloader called "AMD Catalyst Install Manager" and no option is provided to get a driver or the 'switch' called "AMD Catalyst Control Center"

[Ramhound]

No; They can co-exist on the same system. Only specific versions would support switching between the two GPUs.

[Admin]

tried this. got virus signal in panda antivirus which i ignored :) ! after all the shenanigans with removing all remnants of previous drivers all ended with "you don't have the minimum requirements". is this 64x only? lost my previous amd driver, have a standard one for AMD now... I reverted to the Intel as seen in the image

[Ramhound]

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