M17r4 bios a09 - 7970m drivers what is working

I noticed they made changes to the a09 bios that altered the way the bios looks when you go into it via f2. The uefi/legacy is not explained and looks like they were only starting to write it and then stopped. What exactly should the settings be in there is my first question (I have M17xR4 with AMD 7970m and a Core i7-3xxx with Intel HD 4000 Graphics in Windows 7 64bit)?

(P.S.: Slip this ? in as well, so the only way to switch between graphics is the function key? So is enduro not truly switchable on the fly and instead require a manual changing of which is your gpu?)

Should I install the Intel driver first or after the AMD driver (assuming using 12.8 or 12.10 AMD version of drivers)

The second question, I read over the release notes for 12.10 and is it simply just a Windows 8 release (I know it supports Win 7 - wondering if the drivers however make any changes to the Win 7 driver set). When I try to install the 12.10 it refuses to recognize my AMD card. I uninstalled the Intel like many others and still no change. Dell sadly only has the Catalyst 12.6 drivers on their site. The 12.10 only install the HD Audio, the Catalyst Install Driver and SDK kit. However if I uninstall both the AMD 12.10 and Intel HD 4000 and install AMD's 12.8 (not yet released officially by Dell) all the options are there for the install (sorry forgot how many, but something like 8 different options) and on reboot the computer is in beautiful 1920x1080.

So what is causing the 12.10 not to install correctly at least on the systems with 7970m/Intel HD 4000. The "official" word is to stick with the Dell drivers. However I am sure those who bought Alienware laptops didn't buy it for conservative installation of drivers (meaning you prefer the AMD releases rather than hoping or waiting for Dell/Alienware (no offense meant - I have encountered this delay between releases with every discrete graphics card for a laptop I have ever owned (Sony, HP)) to release their official Dell/AW driver - since they have only updated Nvidia drivers within the last 30 days (right now 11/05/2012).

I read the release note for 12.10 and it has fixes for 2 or 3 of the games I play. However are those fixes for "Windows 8" or "Windows 7" or Vista/7/8?

I normally don't install new bios upon release, but silly me I took a chance and it wrecked my install that I was just about to clone as all my drivers and software and updates were working perfect (you know that Harmony of everything that makes you feel happy upon all the discs, updates, etc.). I had to reinstall fresh. Now the only thing I haven't done, is Windows Update (beyond of course the Service Pack 1, .net 4 drivers, the Windows Update Update fix) as I figured if I can't get the AMD 7970m/Intel HD4000 with the 12.10 working why wait around for all those updates to download, again!

Any comments/suggestions - greatly appreciated.

 

The 12.11 beta 4 drivers seem to be working pretty well for me in Win 8. Under Win 7 I was getting some BSOD when F7-ed to discrete-only mode, but not in Win 8 so far.

 

Thanks for the input. +1 Rep for the accurate answer those are the ones working better ATM.