M17xR3 Not sure if my dual Graphics is working.

So my brother has had an Alienware for almost a year now but he has always complained about how bad it is graphical wise.

It wasn't until I finally gave into his complaints and checked his drivers that I noticed that his Alienware M17x was running with the option of two different graphic settings. So I immediately set it to the "High Performance" setting instead of the "Power Saving" setting with the Intel logo next to it. I imagine this means he had two graphics cards on his computer, the integrated Intel chipset and the AMD Mobile Radeon 6870, the graphics cards that was "suppose" to come with this computer.

That said, even after I select the High Performance setting, if I use DxDiag, the display tab still lists the following:

Name: Intel (R) HD graphics Family
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies
Type: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
DAC : Internal
Aproxx. Memory : 1696MB

Etc

So I am worried. Is this using the correct Ati Radeon graphics card? I notice it lists ATI Technologies as a manufacturer but still.

Edit: I would also like to mention that changing the selected graphics card doesn't change whats listed in the Display Tab.

 

The R3 with ATI utilizes manual switching via Fn+F7. The 6870M is on par with the ATI 5870M, which is highly outdated and wont be able to keep up with modern games too well with high res screens.

Software will list both Intel and ATI at the same time because on the R3, they both exist at the same time but only one is being used. Use something like GPU-Z to check which one you're on. Or you can try right clicking desktop to see if any ATI settings can be adjusted via the CCC.

 

I switched between the two by right clicking the desktop and selecting 'Configure Switchable Graphics" and selecting "High Performance". Is that not the same thing?

Either way, when I do switch to high performance, the 6870m Card appears in Device manager, but now that I try to update his Catalyst I get:

"ATI Catalyst Mobility cannot be downloaded due to the incompatible hardware / software on your computer."

I even used ATI's program that detects what Catalyst your computer needs but I would imagine that I need to do a different manual install? How do I go about obtaining these drivers if ATI's website and their Autodetect give me incompatible ones?

 

Yeah switching it to High Performance is the same thing as Fn+F7, sorry I missed that earlier. The ATI auto detect program should work on the 6870M. Have you tried uninstalling the current drivers and cleanly installing a new set?