Which Display Driver is Better?

Had to re install windows 8.1 on my Asus K750J laptop (got a new SSD as my boot drive) and I don’t know which display control panel to use. I have the Intel HD Graphics 4600 with 2GB memory and the Nvidia GeForce 840M and each has a settings control panel and I find this confusing. Please keep in mind that I only use the laptop for data and Excel so I don’t care for high performance graphics but I do care for speed. I also increased the RAM to the max 16GB
I deleted the Nvidia software and the system crashed but after a few reboots it fixed itself and now I wonder what the next step is.
Why I have two display control settings and is it possible to delete one?

 

You do want to have both the Intel Chipset Drivers and the Nvidia Drivers installed. Since they control two different hardware parts, you need drivers for both of them.

Nvidia Optimus will automatically switch the GPU is being used based on what you are doing. So tasks like data and Excel it will use the Intel GPU automatically. You can also designate which GPU is being used for a specific program in Nvidia control panel.

 

Thanks for the help. Since I got my laptop Nvidia has always given me troubles. The 1st time I had dual booting every time I boot and eventually after a lot of searching I disable the Nvidia driver and all went fine. Last week I re installed windows 8.1 (installed a new SSD ) and again I had dual booting: that is when I boot and I get to the log in screen, type my password and hit enter - she reboots and then its ok. So now I disable again the Nvidia driver from the device mgr and all is ok again. I search both the Intel / Nvidia control panels for any setting which may avoid this problem but found non. Some how I believe for whatever reason Nvidia is not a good choice for my laptop. Anyway right now the laptop works well

 

If your laptop features Optimus, then you need to have the Intel HD graphics driver installed before installing the NVidia driver. The best course of practice is to install Asus' stock driver for each in the correct order, then update over them. If your laptop does indeed use Optimus, and you installed the drivers (let alone the most recent ones first) out of order, this could have been what was causing the crash as of your recent Windows install.

 

Thanks for your help Prostar, it makes sense what you’re saying however I don’t know what is Optimus and in any case I don’t think I have it because I never noticed anything in my laptop with this name.

Right now the Nvidia driver is disabled from the device mgr. (but not the software) and the laptop works just fine. Somewhere I noticed that the Nvidia only kicks in when I need high end graphics like playing games and since I don’t have this need then it’s best to let Nvidia sleep.

But I’m happy to know what you said, at least now I understand the problem

 

Sometimes this sort of behavior is a sign that the NVidia chip could be failing, but that's not certain at this point. In any case, if you can get by with just the Intel graphics, then you may not have a problem either way.

 

Thanks for the tip Prostar, hope it will never happen since the Nvidia driver is disabled and hopefully the chip is not working

 

It may not be able to shut down entirely without the driver running and slightly increase idle power usage.