Driver Settings when using GPU Drivers Included with Windows?

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hey everyone.

So I just bought an old Dell Latitude E6540 for all the reasons mentioned here:

I just bought an 8 year old Dell Latitude E6540.

I love older thick-bodied Latitudes. Ease of replacing drives, RAM, WLAN cards, etc make these fantastic. (And that's not to mention the best damn keyboards to grace a laptop in the modern era.

My 6340s has been a real trooper. The little i5-3320M in that thing still keeps pace with much more modern laptop CPU's and it runs like a dream, much better than the 2018 era Dell XPS 15 my work issued me...

But, the 1366x768 display was starting to feel limiting, and I figured I should upgrade to the last gen thick Latitude models before they get so old they disappear, so I got an E6540.

The model I got came equipped with a Haswell i7-4810MQ (4C/8T, 2.8Ghz base, 3.8Ghz boost) AND a Radeon HD 8790M, and displays on a nice 1080p screen. it also has a numerical keypad, something I have never had in a laptop before, and am absolutely loving.

View attachment 429941

I replaced the Wireless LAN card with an AC model, maxed out the RAM to 16GB, tossed the DVD drive and popped in a second hard drive caddy in its place. I have two old 512GB Samsung 850 Pro's in it that used to serve as cache drives in my server. One with Windows 10 on it, the other with Linux Mint.

I'm very happy with this thing. It should cover all of my laptop needs until October 2025 when Windows 10 goes EOL, at which point I'll have to decide if I need to go laptop hunting again or if Linux only will do, because it doesn't seem like Windows 11 will ever be supported on older hardware, which is a real sham, as the older hardware is still plenty capable.

None of these modern ultra thin laptops with those terrible chiclet/Island keyboards appeal to me in the slightest. This was pretty much the end of the line for Dell's thick laptops. I'm not sure what I'd do if I had to switch to anything newer. All newer laptops suck.

Surprisingly enough the old Radeon HD 8790M can actually still support some light games too. I just tested Civilization VI at 1080p and minimum settings. It was completely playable.

Installing AMD's last legacy drivers for the 8790M caused a system hard lock though, that wasn't resolved until I logged in in safe mode and deleted the drivers, so I can only run the Radeon GPU using the drivers that Microsoft provides with Windows 10. I don't have any of the fancy AMD GPU settings, but it seems to run OK for basic light gaming. (and yes, it is rendering on the Radeon, not on the Intel iGPU.

Anyway, I'm very happy with it, but almost a little sad to be moving away from the 6430s. That thing was a real trooper, and it's keyboard was actually slightly better than the one on the 6540.

It's a nifty old laptop, and I am liking it.

It is a dual GPU model integrated Intel graphics + Radeon HD 8790M

Biggest problem I have had is that AMD discontinued their drivers for the Radeon HD 8790M back in June releasing one last set of legacy drivers for the thing.

When I install those legacy drivers, it results in a hard lock of the system. The only way I could get the system to work again was to boot it up in safe mode, and delete the GPU drivers.

Windows 10 does install its own drivers, and they work just fine, but this means I don't get all of those nifty driver settings that are in the AMD driver application.

Is there any way to get the driver application settings with the built in Windows 10 drivers?

Or, are there any other AMD drivers I should try that may not hardlock the system?

Appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Mchart]

Have you tried the drivers made available by Dell for the system off their website?

 

[pendragon1]

i was using the newest off this page when reloading those models last year. there are several versions still on there, one should work and if not, that ^^^
https://www.amd.com/en/support/prev...d-8000m-series/amd-radeon-hd-8790m-series-gpu

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Have you tried the drivers made available by Dell for the system off their website?

I didn't, but maybe I should try them. They were pretty old (released in 2015 I think? I'll chave to check again) so I thought that might be ill advised. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

i was using the newest off this page when reloading those models last year. there are several versions still on there, one should work and if not, that ^^^
https://www.amd.com/en/support/prev...d-8000m-series/amd-radeon-hd-8790m-series-gpu

I'll give those a try as well. Maybe just the last set of legacy drivers from June were bad?

 

[Armenius]

Have you tried the drivers made available by Dell for the system off their website?

Second this. In my experience with laptops getting the drivers from the laptop manufacturer always yields the best result. If the generic GPU manufacturer driver should be used they will just tell you on their support site.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Second this. In my experience with laptops getting the drivers from the laptop manufacturer always yields the best result. If the generic GPU manufacturer driver should be used they will just tell you on their support site.

Thanks for that.

In my 30+ years of doing this stuff I've never had a laptop with a real GPU before, so no experience there.

I also have no experience running GPU's with EOL drivers.

Appreciate the suggestion.

I initially passed on that driver, as it was a 2015 or 2016 release, and thought that might be more problematic than going straight to the manufacturer.

 

[pendragon1]

Thanks for that.

In my 30+ years of doing this stuff I've never had a laptop with a real GPU before, so no experience there.

I also have no experience running GPU's with EOL drivers.

Appreciate the suggestion.

I initially passed on that driver, as it was a 2015 or 2016 release, and thought that might be more problematic than going straight to the manufacturer.

sometime theirs is better or the oem chip is rejected by the generic driver. either way, make sure you follow the dell note "install the intel one first". if you didnt, uninstall both and start over.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

sometime theirs is better or the oem chip is rejected by the generic driver. either way, make sure you follow the dell note "install the intel one first". if you didnt, uninstall both and start over.

Well, Windows installed its own Intel driver.

So they need to be used together?

That gets complicated with Windows 10, since it automatically installs drivers for everything it recognizes.

There is certainly an Intel driver already installed, as well as an AMD driver, but both are the one3s the Windows 10 installer automatically populates.

Would one have to nuke those somehow in order to do this?

 

[pendragon1]

Well, Windows installed its own Intel driver.

So they need to be used together?

That gets complicated with Windows 10, since it automatically installs drivers for everything it recognizes.

There is certainly an Intel driver already installed, as well as an AMD driver, but both are the one3s the Windows 10 installer automatically populates.

Would one have to nuke those somehow in order to do this?

windows would do the intel first, i have never seen it not. worse case ontario, is nuke both and use dell's.