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January 13th, 2013 23:00
M17x r3 switchable graphics problem.
I'm no computer tech (Its why I'm here) but I'm sure there is a problem with my Graphics cards, the one is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M and the other is Intel(R) HD Graphics Family.
Now from the title I cant switch from one GPU to the other, i press FN+F7 and an option comes up to switch....i press yes but nothing happens, I went to the device manager under display drivers and disabled the NVIDIA Card but nothing happened so I re-enabled. I then disabled the Intel Graphics and the screen just went black so I had to restart the laptop through the power switch, when it loaded it was messed up and looked like it was in the worst resolution possible.
I cant play BF 3 any more and have to play War Z on the lowest graphics so I don't get FPS lag (The graphics on that game aren't even that great!)
Hoping to here from the guys!
P.S I also used the Optimus Test and it said 'ON' next to nvidia gpu.
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Alienware-Karen
2 Intern
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433 Posts
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January 15th, 2013 13:00
Hello iBoBBa,
As you probably know the M17xR3 works with the Optimus Technology, so you cannot disable any of the two GPUs on the system with the Fn+F7, this is because they work together to maximize the performance while gaming or running graphic-intensive applications.
Check in the device manager the display adapters and see if the Intel or the nvidia graphics are detected, if one of them have this description "Standard VGA graphics adapter" this means one of the video drivers is missing.
Follow this article to uninstall and reinstall the video drivers on your system, use only Dell driver for proper functionality.
BJFox
2 Intern
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763 Posts
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January 15th, 2013 14:00
If the graphics driver is not properly installed it can cause the issue you are experiencing. I would install the correct Dell/Alienware recommended driver from the Dell Support page and see if that helps.
In the NVIDIA "control panel" you can select which games use only the NVIDIA GPU by default and prevent them from using the Intel integrated graphics. You can manually add a program if it in not already in the list. (My system does not use Optimus, so I cannot give more specific instruction on the "how to" part.) You have sort of a "white list" to prevent games from using the Intel graphics, which may be causing your poor gaming performance. If they are not using the discrete GPU it will perform poorly.
The integrated graphics can be manually disabled in the BIOS, but you will have poor battery life if you do that.
If you look over all of the information provided in the links that Karen gave you, I believe you will find what you need to install the drivers and configure Optimus to perform better. The video is easy to follow.