Inspiron 15R SE 7520 - How to ensure which card: AMD Radeon HD 7730M or Integrated Intel HD 4000 is actually being used?

Thank you very much for the answers. They were very helpful.

HWiNFO64 can show on-line utilization of the AMD GPU which immediately increases (in my case to 40%-50%) when is being used. Otherwise remains constant 0%.

Hello ,

I have the 15' i7 DELL 5520 and im facing the same problem when im in game the game does not use the AMD GPU (i have declared it as a High performance app)  if i alt-tab or quite the game my desktop is flickering pink and i have to restart the pc in order to be able to see anything.

The game btw is(EVE online)

Any help?

Which design 15' i7 DELL 5520 uses PX5.0 or PX4.0 ?

Hi hew86i,

The Dell Inspiron 15R 5520 uses the PX5.0 design, it is Muxless hardware design, and it only supports dynamic switchable graphic function. That means it cannot fix video card at iGPU or dGPU active only.

Is there any workaround like custom catalyst software, application or setting that I can use ? Switchable graphics are not working properly and I always reinstall the amd catalyst software (downloaded from Dell support ).

I get poor results when operating in environments like AutoCAD, 3DS Max, Photoshop etc.

Thanks.

is my only option to switch between Balanced and High performance battery mode (which gives me the same results) ?

Hi hew86i,

You can try change the settings in catalyst center Right click on desktop screen>click on configure switchable graphics>in the catalyst control center and select the game or program and change the settings to “high performance” and click on apply.

You can also check the function of the switchable graphics which is mentioned below.

Inspiron 7520 15r or 15r 5520 which with AMD graphic Chelsea Pro are PX5.0 design, it is Muxless hardware design, and it only support dynamic switchable graphic function. That means it cannot fix video card at iGPU or dGPU active only.

Under the dynamic mode, the user does not directly control which graphics device is active. The render-graphics device is determined by application profile settings and the default rule.

• Displays are always exposed to the OS through integrated graphics.

• Aero desktop always runs on integrated graphics.

• 3D, OpenGL, and video-playback applications run on the fGPU/iGPU or dGPU depending on the application profile.

• If an application does not have a profile, the application runs on the default rendering GPU.

• The end-user can edit application profiles.

• When the last application rendering on the dGPU ends, the dGPU is fully powered off on PX5.0 designs or "put into BACO mode on PX4.0 designs". (there is no BACO design on Inspiron 7520 or 15r 5520

I hope you find this useful.

Hi guys,

I think the problem is quite common in Dell laptops, however the official Dell support can hardly admit that.

I had problem with a movie player (Cyberlink PowerDVD which was officially preinstalled on my laptop)

The answers I got from  Dell engineers on this forum were kind of:

• Update video drivers

• Reinstall drivers

• Reinstall PowerDVD

• Reinstall BIOS

and finally:

• Revert Windows image to factory defaults

... they were not useful at all, but really annoying indeed.

Finally I contacted Cyberlink with the same question and very quickly I got a response that the 'switchable graphics' is not supported by their media player.

After I insisted Dell for their opinion finally I got the same answer as I already from  Cyberlink, but extended with a list of other media players which did not support 'switchable graphics' either. (Finally good job!)

So I wouldn't be surprise if AutoCAD, 3DS Max, Photoshop or many games people complained about,do not support 'switchable graphics' either.

Perhaps you should contact the software producers and ask them directly as I did.

Do not be fooled by the silly 'official' answers on this forum.

Cheers,

Dell please fix our laptops !

So in other words we are limited in using applications and software that only supports switchable graphics !

SUCKS BIG TIME !

that sucks! Big time ! nothing is working properly. Nice laptop but crappy performance. I don't know what to say anymore...

Dell support people always gives the same answer and NO SOLUTION !

Hi hew86i,

The current switchable graphics technology is not application specific, so any applications do not have to specifically support switchable graphics for it to work correctly. However, since x-zen has mentioned that Cyber link power DVD does not support switchable graphics, we will escalate this issue to our ‘Engineering team’ to get more clarification.