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I have a ATI Dynamic Switchable Graphics on a HP Pavilion g7 (hp pavilion g7-1246ef).

I had some graphics problems with this VGA card in Linux and I found (here) that I have this double-VGA type of GPU (if my terms are correct). I gave up using Linux on that PC but now I want to have a bit more control in Windows (7). The system works fine in windows, but sometimes the cooler gets noisy for minute tasks and I guess that is because the discrete card is used: I want to be able to control the way this works.

It seems that I have 2 VGA controllers:

  • One on-CPU Intel for energy-efficiency
  • One discrete card (an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6470M in your case) for rendering.

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I searched here for the Catalyst Control Center utility (the one presented here)

But when I try to install the catalyst_mobility_32-bit_util.exe, I get this:

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When I try to use the AMD Driver Autodetect (from here), the same error happens (although for some reason this utility chooses the 7xxxM series instead of 6xxxM series).

Following Ramhound's comments, I searched specifically for an OEM driver (AMD driver modified by HP) and found (here only 64-bit version for Win7 and Win 8 versions. The Win8-32bit manager installs on the system but then reports that it cannot find any drivers.

To sum up, the AMD Catalyst Install Manager can be installed from here (called "Latest AMD Catalyst™ Drivers for Radeon™ R9 200, R7 200, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series") but then it looks useless to me. I cannot run it, although it looks installed in add/remove list. The installation procedure has these stages:

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But the folder C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies is empty!

What should I do?

Can this be because of the Intel Graphics and Media Control Center which is installed?

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    Have you tried to use the driver release issue by the OEM?
    – Ramhound
    Mar 14, 2014 at 10:46
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    Well Aero could be working because of the Intel drivers but why would you want to remove them?
    – Ramhound
    Mar 14, 2014 at 11:45
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    Autodetect will only display drivers released by AMD directly not drivers modified by HP.
    – Ramhound
    Mar 14, 2014 at 11:46
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    Support for that feature might have been migrated to only newer cards. This problem really only needs one question. There is only one problem here honestly.
    – Ramhound
    Mar 14, 2014 at 14:14
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    No; They can co-exist on the same system. Only specific versions would support switching between the two GPUs.
    – Ramhound
    Mar 14, 2014 at 14:53

5 Answers 5

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I had the same problem while ago.

I assure you that your AMD card is not working properly, even not showing any problems in device manager. The diference between me and you is that I am on a Dell computer.

What I did was installing the drivers from leshcatlabs. You will need to do a clean up first (you can find it under UNIFL>SUPORT>MANUALS).

Leshcat gets the latest AMD and Intel GPU drivers and does the bridge between them.

Dell's official drivers for switchable graphics are very outdated. Thats why I use Leshcat now. If you try any direct driver download from AMD website, it wont work properly!

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  • tried this. got virus signal in panda antivirus which i ignored :) ! after all the shenanigans with removing all remnants of previous drivers all ended with "you don't have the minimum requirements". is this 64x only? lost my previous amd driver, have a standard one for AMD now... I reverted to the Intel as seen in the image
    – user162573
    Aug 4, 2014 at 22:55
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Thanks to the advice given by and31415 (in the comments under other question) I was able to install the Catalyst driver and the Catalyst Control Center (and the rest of the Catalyst/AMD suite). The advice was to find first the harware's id.

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(See - How To Find Unknown Device Drivers By Their Vendor & Device ID)

I will paste here the comments:

"The AMD card ID is PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6760&SUBSYS_1672103C&REV_00, which corresponds to Radeon (TM) HD 6470M. Despite the fact no 32-bit driver seem to be available, the 64-bit package actually contains both. Make sure to uninstall the current driver, restart, and then install the one provided by HP. As for the Intel card, the 32-bit package for Windows 8 is compatible with Windows 7 as well."

So, the driver and the CCC application that I had to install were those modified by HP (downloaded from here). As stated in the comment, I used the 64-bit AMD driver and the Intel Win8 32-bit driver on a Win 7 32-bit system. This also confirms the comments made above by Ramhound on using the OEM drivers.

This is the answer to the present question.

However, I have to add that after a short while I noticed that the Catalyst AMD/ATI driver was taking a lot of resources, which made me doubt that I needed that in fact. It is intended for game playing and other intense use of the GPU, but I do not need that. In fact, I was just searching for a proper driver that would make the fans as quite as possible while keeping the system safe. The AMD driver and card are made for high-energy consuming tasks and the fans would by used more in such cases; so, fans were not quieter, on the contrary (one is incited by CCC to add more applications to the list of apps using the discrete card); while the Task Manager was showing oddly 6-7 instances of the ATI driver each using 25-50 MB of RAM (and that did not happen before).

The solution that works for now is:

  • Keeping the Intel driver from HP (which is designed for Windows 8 but works in 7)

  • Uninstalling the AMD driver and CCC from HP and using Windows update to install the latest AMD driver (there is no CCC there though). That brought me close to what I was looking for.

(For gaming and other GPU intensive use the OEM driver with CCC may still be the best solution.)

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After trying one of the answers that involved cleaning completely all previously installed drivers I found myself with no drivers at all.

I managed to put back some drivers, but I was not able to install an AMD application with a GUI intended for switching between the two cards and I am not sure that I need that (I guess the switching is done according to the needs of different applications running - ?), but I found an answer to the question:

to install an AMD/ATI Catalyst driver in Windows 7 on a computer like mine go to Device Manager, Display adapters, right click on the adapter (if might have only a generic name), "Update Driver Software", and then "Browse my computer for driver software".

What was happening when running the .exe packages from AMD like the one mentioned in the question was that some files were un-packed in C:\AMD. So, I browsed the computer to one of the latest versions I found: C:\AMD\Support\14-4-mobility-win7-win8-win8.1-32-dd-ccc-whql\Packages\Drivers...

(At some point I just directed to C:\AMD where different packages are stored and it installed something - maybe the same - with the same result.)

Now I can see that its name looks a bit different than in the initial question: AMD Radeon HD 7400M series.

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AMD does no onger support Switchable Graphics (because they no longer use that system, they now use "Dual Graphics", two VGAs working as if they were one) to have the Switchable Graphics again, and your card updated too, you need to download the latest beta drivers (make sure that it says "mobility", if you install desktop drivers you'll screw up), install everything, and then, you have to download Catalyst Mobility 12.8 or 12.9.

While you are downloading that, you need to uninstall Catalyst Control Center (go to the list of programs installed, double click "AMD Catayst Install Manager, click next, and choose the first option, then select that you want to uninstall CCC), well now open Catalyst 12.8 (or 12.9) installer, and install CCC (and only CCC, uncheck anything else). You have switchable graphics again now.

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I've worked with Dells for many years, and was a Warranty Field tech for a couple of years, now in a corporate Dell environment. I've seen this happen in laptops, and the best solution I've seen is to uninstall all current drivers - AMD and Intel. Reboot, then Windows will install its own.

Try installing the Intel driver, with a reboot. When Win comes back, see if the AMD installer will allow to extract files. If so, go through device manager and install the drivers. Be sure to tell Device Manager that you want to look for your own drivers in a specific location.

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  • This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post.
    – Ramhound
    Sep 28, 2015 at 15:18

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