dv6t quad graphics

Hi i am still a newbie here, so basically i ordered a dv6t quad (i think is the latest edition 6100) with the radeon 6770m and i am so excited. However i read that people had some great problems with the switchable graphics that i don't understand. So basically now you can't switch manually but only dynamic right? so if yes my question is why is this bad? like what can't you don?

also is this a hardware problem or a software problem? i mean let's assume that hp decides to bring the manual back, would it be able to just release a new driver or we will be just stock with the issue and our only alternative would be to buy new hardware for the laptop?

thanks

 

The problem is not that you can't switch manually, it's that unlike the old manual system, the dynamic switching does not work for a certain class of applications and games (OpenGL). For games, this is not actually that bad -- there are a few exceptions, but most of them do not use it. However, for content creation software (anything made by Adobe and many others), this is a serious problem because you'll have to use the integrated graphics and they're a lot slower. The reason people have been trying to get the old manual way back is to work around this limitation.

To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing special about OpenGL so if AMD changes their policy on supporting it with discreet cards, a new driver or at works a BIOS/vBIOS update should fix it. However, I don't know the details of HP's implementation (nobody outside of HP does) so I'm not entirely sure of that.