Dell Inspiron HD4000/8730m Issues.

rpmmatt · 4 Sep 2013 at 00:55

OK, my old Dell XPS with dual 8800's died through overheating, so I replaced it with a 17 Inch Inspiron from the Dell outlet. It has the switchable graphics of the integrated Intel HD4000 and a Radeon 8730m.

Now, I can't seem to get any software at all to recognise the 8730. I bought the laptop for occasional gaming at low settings, but nothing will get the games to pick up the discrete card.

Power settings set to performance. Catalyst control panel set to "High performance" as well as the individual games being set to high performance as well. Still no joy. Disabling the HD4000 just sets everything to the microsoft basic renderer and crashes the Radeon drivers. This is all using Windows 8.

I am feeling pretty ripped off as I might of well have saved my money and just got a laptop without a discrete card.

Anyone have any ideas?????

d_brennen · 4 Sep 2013 at 01:02

Uninstall drivers for both GPUs and install afresh, use drivers from Dell's support site initially.

BlkKnight · 5 Sep 2013 at 13:22

Install the intel drivers & Reboot - then the ATI drivers - then reboot again

rpmmatt · 16 Sep 2013 at 01:16

OK. I have tried this several times over with no joy.

Everything uninstalled with restart each time, then re installed one at a time with a restart each time(I used only the drivers from the Dell support site). Have re installed the games but still having no joy.

No idea what I am doing wrong, any ideas?

BlkKnight · 16 Sep 2013 at 10:00

Have you tried disabling the intel card in BIOS and see if it recognises the new 8730?

rpmmatt · 16 Sep 2013 at 20:16

BlkKnight said:
Have you tried disabling the intel card in BIOS and see if it recognises the new 8730?

Doesn't work I'm afraid, if you disable the HD4000, then you only get very basic output like you get in safe mode.

Orcvader · 16 Sep 2013 at 21:37

Sadly not all manufacturers have given the user the option to disable the switchable graphics in the BIOS.

What games have you tried? Most of the games that I have played uses my discrete 7670M GPU, even though it only reports the HD 4000 (I use GPU-Z to check usage). There's only a few hiccups which only uses the Intel one such as flashed based games (which from googling, may either be Flash not properly supporting switchable graphics or poor drivers).

As for trying to disable the switchable graphics so only the discrete is used, if there's no option to set it to "fixed" mode in the BIOS, then apparently there are 3rd party drivers that may solve this, but I haven't given them a go yet...

Really though, it would be better if AMD gave the user more control over their switchable graphics, such as the option to not use the Intel one at all and only the discrete. Even setting the application to "High performance" in CCC sometimes gets ignored...

rpmmatt · 20 Sep 2013 at 22:51

Mainly Rome 2 and Warthunder.

While both are playable, they seem to be using just the HD4000 and performance suffers. I really do feel ripped off, as essentially the AMD card is just sat there doing nothing, and I intentionally spent the extra to get a discrete GPU for light gaming. Before I reinstalled all the drivers there was an option to track which software used which card, but now I can't seem to find it, but when it was there it reported everything as only using the HD4000.(never thought to use GPUZ, will try that)

The laptop is still under warranty, so I might try getting on to Dell.

One other thought, is it worth putting Windows 7 on this instead. It came with Windows 8 but I will happily downgrade to 7 if that would help this issue.