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    Please help: Lenovo u400 Ideapad switching of graphic card

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by xsainty, Nov 9, 2011.

  1. xsainty

    xsainty Newbie

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    Hi i recently purchased a lenovo u400, but the graphic card keep staying at the intel GMA HD Card instead of the ATI Radeon card within it.

    Does anyone knows how to switch graphic card on a lenovo u400? Tried all options, even google does not tell me. need some help! thanks
     
  2. Necravolver

    Necravolver Newbie

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    Hmm is there a switchable graphics section in the Catalyst Control Center?
     
  3. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    Is there anything like this?
    [​IMG]
     
  4. xsainty

    xsainty Newbie

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    hi sorry there ins't anything like what i see


    This is what i see instead

    [​IMG]
     
  5. xsainty

    xsainty Newbie

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    they catalys control centre i have is shown above. it only shows high performance and power saving. no matter what i press it just sticks to the Intel Graphics card and not the ATI radeon one!
     
  6. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    Seems you will need to manually add the programs that you want to change to High Performance. I would not recommend you run Chrome on High Performance, and probably no need for touchzone.exe either.
     
  7. xsainty

    xsainty Newbie

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    so there is no way to make it permanantly on my ATI radeon graphic card instead? hmm....
     
  8. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    Doesn't seem to be a way. Did you already tick "Show a pop-up warning for unassigned programs"? That way you can pick manually at least.
     
  9. xsainty

    xsainty Newbie

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    Heh, yes i did, just checked it. oh well. so i can't use my better graphic card eh. :\ will try to find a way to make it fix permanantly
     
  10. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    It would seem that you can use it, just not all the time as it would crate unnecessary heat. Maybe you can check in the BIOS if there is an option to disable the graphics card switching?
     
  11. xsainty

    xsainty Newbie

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    Oh you have any idea how do i go the BIOS to de-activate graphic switching? Thanks!
     
  12. ashchicken

    ashchicken Notebook Enthusiast

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    The purpose of switchable graphics is to enable high-performance 3D for apps that need it, like games. There's no point in wanting to run your Radeon graphics all the time. All that is going to achieve is lower battery life and more heat. For web browsing, mail, photo-editing, etc, there's no meaningful advantage to the Radeon card in the laptop over the Intel integrated GPU. If you have an app that specifically uses the capabilities of the Radeon GPU, like a video encoding app that uses the DirectCompute API or something, you can use that applet you took a screenshot of to configure it. Otherwise, you're better off leaving it alone.
     
  13. xsainty

    xsainty Newbie

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    Sounds logical, but yeah, apparently they ins't a way to turn on the ATI Radeon Card permanantly