Retina Graphics Card Switching under Windows 7

Does anyone know of a tool that would allow me to switch graphics cards in Windows 7? I believe having such a tool would greatly improve battery life since I will only used Windows 7 for work.
Thanks!

The only thing I can think of is maybe Apple doesn't have a Lion compatible Firmware installer?
If nobody else hops in here with another idea then the only thing I can think of is to get an external HD and install 10.6 back on to it and boot from there and give it ago. If anything you now have a back up disk?
Maybe try the iMac forums to see how they did it. Just mention you were here already.
But you MAY have to swap the drives as the firmware installer might not work via booted from an external drive, just the nature of the beast.

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Tip for ALL Graphics cards running under Windows

PLEASE STICKY THIS
This is a really useful tip for anyone running windows ME or XP.
It doesn't matter what card your installing and it really helped me out once.
Use System Restore
System restore is a simple utility Microsoft came up with for things like registry changes or putting new hardware/software in.
All you have to do is:
1. Set up system restore to monitor the hard drives or partitions you want it too. This can simply be done by going to start>all programs (or program files)>accessories>system setup>system restore. Once the window has opened choose system restore settings and from here you can change what hard drives are monitored and how much disk space restore can use.
2. Before you make a change to your card (whether it be drivers or putting a card in) open up system restore as in step '1' but choose create restore point. The system may hang for a minute then you will be told a restore point has been made.
3. Now any change you make to anything to do with the operating system will be noted by windows and the unchanged vesion will be kept in that hard drive space you specified in step '1'
4. Should the drivers screw up your system you can boot in safe mode (by hammering F8 between POST and OS loading screen) and when a dialog box comes up saying you have started in safe mode choose to run system restore.
NOTE: BIOS changes can NOT be undone in system restore, and if your computer won't boot at all your ed!!!
System restore should not be used if your computer is running ok, or if you can resolve the issues by changing drivers, using system restore can bring back spyware, viruses and trojans! If there is a power failure or your PC crashes when running system restore yu may need to format your hard drive.

Quote from: ratkid132 on 08-April-05, 02:31:10
This is a really useful tip for anyone running windows 2000 or XP.
It doesn't matter what card your installing and it really helped me out once.
Use System Restore System restore is a simple utility Microsoft came up with for things like registry changes or putting new hardware/software in.
System Restore is only available in Windows XP.
Most video driver related problems can be solved by uninstalling the old drivers, rebooting, and cancelling the "found new hardware" dialog before running the new driver installer.

Photoshop CS6 running extremely slow after graphics card switch

My old graphics card died (a evga 8800 Ultra Superclocked 756MB 384 bit), so I replaced it with a (XFX HD-455X-ZAFR Radeon HD 4550 1GB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 ). I knew this was a less capable card but from reading other forums it seemed that GPU performance was not as big of an issue in Photoshop and the 4550 was a supported card by Photoshop. However, I was previously able to batch open about 15 (ish) photos at a time to work on in Photoshop. Now if I open more than 1 everything is VERY slow and even that 1 doesn't open as fast. Bigger photos appear blurry (but when I zoom in they are not) many filters are slower. Very annoying. Nothing else has changed on my computer, just the graphics card. Here are my specs (I know I need more RAM and have been considering an upgrade there but am not sure if I need to ditch my current video card as well)
Asustek p5e3 motherboard
Core 2 extreme qx9650 (quad core at 3.0 ghz)
4 GB of DDR3 1333mhz ram
(3) 500 GB 7200RPM hard drives
Radeon HD 4550 1GB 64-bit DDR2
500 Watt Power Supply

I don't mean to be critical, but why would you upgrade to an outdated card like the 4550? The 4000-series isn't even listed under the cards Photoshop is tested with any more.
Tested video cards for Photoshop CC and CC 2014
That said, a problem that can happen with a video card switch is that drivers get left in the system from the old one.
Maybe it would be a good start in diagnosing this for you go to into the Help - System Info menu, copy the data in the whole first section, and post it here.
-Noel

Problem with switchable graphic cards after installing windows 10

Dear support, after installing windows 10 i lost option to switch my graphic cards. I already have installed new drivers for win10 64-bit. But it doesn't work. New drivers which i downloaded here: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+10+-+64 doesn't support my graphic card. So i don't know what to do to get right drivers and be able to switch my graphic cards. Thanks for any help.

Hi there
Welcome to the HP Support Forums! It is a great place to find the help you need, both from other users, HP experts and other support personnel. I understand that you installed Windows 10 and that switchable graphics is not working for you. I am happy to help. Unfortunately this is not something that AMD can help with, as it is a customized driver for your notebook. Did you do the Windows 10 installation as an upgrade and if so which operating system did you upgrade from? The existing HP drivers can be found here: HP Pavilion g6-1004ev Notebook PC but they are for Windows 7 or 8 depending on your choices. You could try those and install it using compatibility mode and see if that works. How to: Install and Update drivers in Windows 10 - answers.microsoft.com Let me know if that works for you.

Upgrading Graphic card's driver (Windows on iMac)

Hello,
I have installed Windows on my iMac using Bootcamp. Everything is running quite smoothly. One of the 3D games I play has a few graphical glitches, though.
I would like to know if it is necessary / feasible / advised to update the graphic card's (ATI Radeon HD2600) drivers under my Windows partition ?
And can this affect in any way my Mac OS X installation ?
Thanks for your answer.

I have the same kind of issue. I play Cabal Online (Europe version) and with my imac, running XP with SP2, there are a lot of glitches(i see bounding boxes, etc) that don't happen when I play on my Macbook. Occasionally I even get a blue screen of death. Any update on this matter? Thank you.

Video/Graphics Card to raise Windows Vista Readiness Score

If your like model desktop PC is like mine, then your Vista Readiness score for video/graphics/gaming is the lowest of all of the scores, or somewhere under 3. I would like to improve that score with an add of video/graphic card. I am not looking to go too wild, I just want to bring that score up to be on par of the rest of scores of 4-5 to a little over 5. Is there any recommendations from anyone who has tried this. What card did you use? One that will not eat up too much memory The addition of more memory will be my first step ahead of this one. I am not into gaming much, I just want my PC to work not so hard when displaying graphics and video.
Anyone, any idea?
Thanks,
dlfetters
Moderator Note; Edited message subject
Message Edited by andyP on 12-24-2008 06:36 PM

About six months ago I installed an NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT. My graphics score is 5.9 and the Gaming graphics score is 5.6. It installed easily, and I haven't had any problems with it.
Lenovo 3000 K100 57061330 Intel Desktop Computer - Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz, 3GB DDR2, 500GB SATA, SATA DVDRW, Windows Vista Home Premium, Nvidia G-Force 8600, external Maxtor 500GB backup disk.

Getting graphics card replaced under Apple Care, How?

Hi everyone
I have a Mac Pro, 3Ghz Quad with 5 GB of RAM and a Radeon X1900 XT and Apple Cinema 30".
For the first few months that I had it I could play games fine on it. Then slowly it started malfunctioning on anything that is GPU intensive. At first the monitor would black out in game and then the computer would restart. I had the machine cleaned and that fixed the problem for a while. Then problems started to appear again. The machine would completely hard freeze while in-game.
I came on here and asked about the problem and found out that a lot of people who play WOW on 30" Cinema Displays with Radeon X 1900 XTs were having the same problem. It was due to the fact that the graphics card overheats (bad design on apples part). I have never played WOW but I get the same problem. They suggested using smcFanControl to up the idle speed of my PCIe/HDD fan (the fan still runs within its rated RPMs). This helped for a while when I ran the fan at 3x its normal idle speed. But I really didn't enjoy hafting to go and change my fan speed before playing a game, and games within windows wouldn't work at all.
Now my games ether hard freeze a few minuets in (under OS X or Windows), or I get graphics glitches (polygons get stretched out into infinity off of different objects). This is unacceptable considering the machine is hardly 8 months old (and I have Apple Care on it), also considering I have done nothing wrong or out of the ordinary and the GPU just deteriorated into this state on its own.
So I was wondering how I can go about getting Apple to replace my GPU for free under the Apple Care. I'm located in Guatemala and there is an apple authorized repair place here.

Call AppleCare. Open a problem report/ticket on this.
* Order parts (Do-it-Yourself)
* Request a repair online
* Check your repair status
* Service FAQ
Before you seek service, check out our Mac Pro support articles to see if an article can help you resolve the issue. For information about getting hardware service, see our Mac Pro service FAQ and Contacting Apple Support pages, or get help from these options:
* Find a retail Apple Store near you
* Find a local Apple Authorized Service Provider
* Order a replacement part or upgrade
* Check my repair status
Have AppleCare Protection Plan? Download TechTool Deluxe
http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/
I would also run Apple Hardware Test in the meantime. There is suppose to be a revised 2nd generation Radeon. I know it has been discussed heavily on the WoW forums.

X230T graphics performance under Windows 8

My Thinkpad originally came with Windows 7 Pro, but I have changed to Windows 8 in order to resolve problems with VSS. OOB, both Windows 7 and Windows 8 gave me a "Desktop graphics performance" rating of 5.7. Under Windows 7, upgrading to the latest Lenovo driver improved this to 6.1, leaving my HDD (at 5.9) as the limiting factor in performance. Under Windows 8, however, replacing the Windows driver with the latest Lenovo driver has reduced "Desktop graphics performance" to 5.6! What gives?
P.S. I just discovered a Power Options advanced power setting "Intel Graphics Power Plan", which was set to "Maximum Battery Life" for both battery and plugged in. I changed it to "Maximum Performance" when plugged in, but the Windows experience Index (WEI) for "Desktop graphics performance" remains a mer 5.8.
X320T running Windows 8 Pro x64

rsbrux wrote:
My Thinkpad originally came with Windows 7 Pro, but I have changed to Windows 8 in order to resolve problems with VSS. OOB, both Windows 7 and Windows 8 gave me a "Desktop graphics performance" rating of 5.7. Under Windows 7, upgrading to the latest Lenovo driver improved this to 6.1, leaving my HDD (at 5.9) as the limiting factor in performance. Under Windows 8, however, replacing the Windows driver with the latest Lenovo driver has reduced "Desktop graphics performance" to 5.6! What gives?
P.S. I just discovered a Power Options advanced power setting "Intel Graphics Power Plan", which was set to "Maximum Battery Life" for both battery and plugged in. I changed it to "Maximum Performance" when plugged in, but the Windows experience Index (WEI) for "Desktop graphics performance" remains a mer 5.8.
After you changed the setting to "Maximum Performance" , did you run the WEI test again?

Problem With Macbook Air 5,1 Graphic Card Driver For Windows 7 - 64 bit

Hello everyone,
I have a macbook air 5,1 , ver 2012-2013
I Installed Windows 7 64bits Ultimate on my macbook, and i downloaded the latest boot camp and i installed it too!
After finish Installing Boot Camp, everything looks fine until it finshes and then i restarted my mac,
Then i found out that my Graphic Card is not working!!,
I Reformated the System 10 times and i tried diffirent versions for example (32 bits) and (home premium) - (Enterprise)
And Still the problem is the same..
It is working perfectly with MAC OSX but on windows it doesn't
I Searched a lot for drivers for intel hd 4000 in intel's website and i downloaded it, but the system is failing when i tried to install a driver from out side boot camp
so i reformat it!,
and now i am working on it without graphic card
Please help!!? any suggestion i would be thankfull <3

Thanks for sharing your tip RatioCynic! That's what this forum is all about!
Happy printing!
Thanks!
Tara
**Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.

Is my graphics card too under-powered to use the graphics settings in the 64bit CS 6

I cannot get certain filters to work in 64bit CS6 as it will not let me used the GPS settings because it seems to think my driver is not installed properly. I have reinstalled the latest driver to no avail. In 32 bit CS6 I have no problems at all.
I am using a Dell M4700 workstation with a AMD Firepro M4000 (FireGL V) on the Windows 7 operating system.
Is my graphics card too underpowered to use the graphics settings or are there other issues involved?

I don't know AMD cards, but I just looked up the notebook, and that is a very capable little system, so I really think it should be OK. The bottom line, as you have already stated, is that it needs an up to date driver. Where did you find your 'latest' driver?
If you got it from Dell or Microsoft, then you could likely end up with an out of date driver, so you need to go to the AMD site.
http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/WORKSTATION/GRAPHICS/ATI-FIREPRO-MOBILITY/Pages/ati-firepro -mobility.aspx
AMD have an auto update tool here, but you will probably need Java installed
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

Macbook pro 15 retina graphic card problems

I have a problem that my mac dont wanna run the Geforce gt 650M graphic card.. its saying that is running the geforce but you can tell by the
proformance that its using the intel HD graphic 4000.. is it software or hardware problems ?
i try running the computer on bootcamp windows and have the same problems its running on the intel graphic card even tho its saying thats its running
on the geforce..

SnipeSwipe wrote:
What is an SMC reset? The gfxcardstatus worked. Partially. I now know something is either wrong with the nvidia graphic card or its software(the hd 4000 one is better from a performance test by individually testing both cards).
How does the apple exchange work? Just walk in with the Mac and they resolve/replace the Mac or what? Any ideas?
Thanks
SMC Reset: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
The reset is a little tricky and might take a few tries before you do it successfully, keep eye on for the colour change on the magsafe connector

MacBook Pro Shuts Down on Graphics Card Switch

Hello All,
Been having some fun (sarcasm) issues with my MacBook Pro (late 2007) 17" First Gen Unibody...
Recently, I had to have the Logic Board replaced by Apple because it popped - literally, audibly popped. I usually run the machine on "Better battery life..." but while working on a more processor intense project, I went to switch it to "Higher Performace."
So the computer asked to log out, i logged back in, and as soon as Finder started up, the computer went dark. I freaked out, didn't hear a "pop" this time, but it wasn't responding! Hit the power button and it rebooted just fine, but put itself back into "Better battery life..." and so i tried to switch it to full power again... signed out, signed in, and again as soon as Finder launched, blackness.
Looks like I'm going to have to take it back in - but I was curious if anyone else had an suggestions for self diagnostics or a way to check if my discrete graphics card is fried?
Thanks guys, Enjoy the Day,
-Joel

Reinstall Snow Leopard without erasing the drive
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
If the above doesn't work then you've had a hardware failure and should take it in for repair. This could be a hard drive failure or some other hardware breakdown.

New MBP early 2011 Dynamic Graphics Card Switching Bug

Fresh out of the box 2.3GHz quad core i7 MBP 15" with HiRes Screen.
A sudden white or blue "Flash" of the entire screen repeats every 1 or 2 seconds. This occurs without any foreground applications running. Also, noted sudden flash during Screen Saver... where it would appear to awaken for 1/2 a second, then back to screen saver, every 10 - 20 seconds.
Bottom line.... Disabling the Automatic Graphics Switching in the Energy Saver System Preferences fixes it. No more screen flash.
I installed gfxCardStatus app (http://codykrieger.com/gfsCardStatus). With this you can set the laptop to use either the "integrated" or "discrete" graphics cards specifically or you can set it to "Dynamic Switching".
Each card used works fine. No flash with either card. Only with the "Dynamic Switching" option does my screen "flash" repeatedly. This is most pronounced when on battery power. The gfsCardStatus shows the laptop repeatedly attempting to switch graphics cards for no reason I can see. The only "login Item" I have is "HP Scheduler".
In Activity Monitor Utility the CPU process at the time of the screen "flash" is "WindowServer".
Anyone else with new quad core i7s seeing this?
Any fix? The Automatic Graphics switching is a nice idea... too bad I can't use it.

I think I solved my problem.
I found two, seemingly unrelated, processes running in the background using the "Console". I removed all "HP" related "Login Items" from my User Account. I also deleted all old, unnecessary items from the /Library/LaunchAgents/ folder, including "com.seagate.notificationexec.plist". For some reason now, without these background processes, my computer no longer tries to frequently switch graphics cards.... I have no idea why, but it seems to work. For the last 24hrs... no blinky! See below.
The "Console App" indicated a couple background processes happening that seemed unrelated to graphics. Below is the log:
3/14/11 8:23:28 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[190] (com.hp.devicemonitor[888]) Exited with exit code: 1
3/14/11 8:23:28 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[190] (com.hp.devicemonitor) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
3/14/11 8:23:31 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[190] (com.seagate.notificationexec.plist) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
3/14/11 8:23:38 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[190] (com.hp.devicemonitor[890]) posix_spawn("/Library/Printers/hp/hpio/HP Device Monitor.app/Contents/MacOS/HP Device Monitor", ...): No such file or directory

Will there be seamless graphic card switching with Snow Leopard?

With new MacBook/Pro's that have the integrated 9400 and 9600 graphic cards, Leopard has to log out to make the switch between them. Any word that this can be done without logging out? Nvidia had announced that technically speaking their GPU's do support it.
Thanks.

FWIW, MS Office '04 has worked with SL for over year (while I was beta-testing SL and since it went public). I don't use any of the others. However, here's a list of what works: http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/snowleopard/topic4883.html

Graphics card update for windows 7 problem

Hi, I have a 24" iMac 2008 it requires a graphics card upgrade for installing windows 7 i have 10.7 lion running, but it says on checking available disks that it cannot be installed on this disk as it requires 10.6 any ideas the update says 10.6 or later

The only thing I can think of is maybe Apple doesn't have a Lion compatible Firmware installer?
If nobody else hops in here with another idea then the only thing I can think of is to get an external HD and install 10.6 back on to it and boot from there and give it ago. If anything you now have a back up disk?
Maybe try the iMac forums to see how they did it. Just mention you were here already.
But you MAY have to swap the drives as the firmware installer might not work via booted from an external drive, just the nature of the beast.

Retina Graphics Card Switching under Windows 7

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