Dell Inspiron 15r Special Edition Graphics Card

heyman123 -

Are you comparing apples to oranges here when you state "couple of my friends who play with me have similar or lesser quality graphics cards" - I do hope you are comparing to systems that are just like yours. You can't compare a system that has an AMD Dedicated GPU to one that has an AMD Discrete GPU coupled to an Integrated Graphics Processor like the Intel HD GPU.

In a nutshell your Discrete Card Only Renders Graphics it has no Display port Technology built into it. It bascially has to shovel all that information over the PCI bus to the Intel HD IGP to have it actually displayed and here is where Frame Latency can occur.  

These newer systems are Muxless, meaning there is no Physical Electronic Switches built in to the system that can switch Display Ports between the graphic processors. The Intel HD IGP must be active at all times, it can't be disabled, same reason why older games, older benchmarks only show the Intel Card as the selectable Graphics Processor. Same reason why people who complain that they just want to turn off the Intel HD completely are clueless because they didn't take the time to research how the technology works.

OK Now with that said....

AMD has finally (as it's been well over a year since this technology has been around), as of Late October/Early November, when they released their 12.11 beta drivers, where they have improved performance for applications/games, and started to fix their Enduro Performance part of the catalyst driver responsible for handling how their discrete cards (dGPU) work.  They have reworked, memory management within the driver, they revamped and streamlined the UI interface within the Catalyst Control Center for their Enduro Technology and they now have a new "Profile" engine which basically opened up more options for the user to better control which GPU will handle the rendering in these types of units for specific settings (power saving, high performance).

That 12.11 beta has now been incorporated with their recently released (as of Mid January) reference 13.1 WHQL Drivers. (Reference drivers are what OEM's use as a base to build their custom drivers from, Eventually and hopefully Dell will base their next released drivers on this build as well. You can see why there's a lag here as it takes AMD forever to even correct issues and put out fixed drivers for System OEM's to use and then it takes Dell Forever to get their custom driver out.

Note, if you read the Driver Links you'll note AMD has been improving applications/games with some showing significant improvements of 10,20 and some as high as 50% better.

My point here, yes you may be seeing worse performance they your friends, but you need to ensure you are comparing apples to apples. Is there a fix, yes AMD working hard to correct and improve their drivers, just that they are well behind in doing so, thus Dell even further behind with providing the drivers as well.

Last -

I don't work for Dell and this is a free and open public forum, this is totally up to you but I suggest maybe you want to look at http://leshcatlabs.net instead of waiting around for Dell to catch up with their drivers.   Go there, read what they have to say about their 13.1 WHQL UnifL Intel/AMD Laptop Drivers.  If you decide that perhaps this may work for you.  MAKE sure you read the manual on what you need to do, to prep your system and what you need to do after those drivers are installed... READ The manual Top to Bottom and ensure you understand it all.  Wise to make a complete system backup and ensure you can do a complete restore as well in case something messes up.

Cheers