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I have a ATI/AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics on a HP Pavilion g7 (hp pavilion g7-1246ef). This computer came with a pre-installed Windows 7 64 bit OS. For some reason I had to use the Windows 7 32-bit OS and there are no 32-bit drivers for my computer (it looks like; they should be here).

I was able to install drivers, Aero works and so on, but the fans are loud, so that I would like to try and find some driver that will fix this...

I would like to know exactly what my VGA is called before installing any driver. Using Linux, I found that that I have practically two: one on-CPU Intel for energy-efficiency, one discrete card (an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6470M) for rendering.

At some point in Windows it looked like so:

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and now it looks like so:

enter image description here

Hardware ids:

enter image description here

enter image description here

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    Were did you get the graphic driver from? Considering you're using a laptop with switchable graphics, you need specific drivers for both cards. What's the hardware ID for both?
    – and31415
    Aug 5, 2014 at 9:25
  • @and31415 - I have found the Intel HD 3000 on an Intel site I guess, that was pretty forward. I found different packages for AMD/ATI on the Catalyst website, but I had problems with that, as specifed in this question (other package was tested and discussed there), but in the end I have installed the driver (details in this answer).
    – user162573
    Aug 5, 2014 at 9:40
  • @and31415 - hardware ids now posted in the question
    – user162573
    Aug 5, 2014 at 10:09
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    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.
    – and31415
    Aug 5, 2014 at 11:02
  • @and31415: You're great! your comment is a great answer to my other question on how to install video drivers on that specific laptop! - please post this there as answer and I will then set a bounty for you.
    – user162573
    Aug 5, 2014 at 16:39

3 Answers 3

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After trying different ways to install the drivers my opinion is that in order to see the hardware the system needs some kind of software/drivers. Removing all drivers completely makes the hardware inaccessible. In most cases Windows will try to install some minimal generic drivers as soon as it detects their absence. In some cases removing the drivers will make the display unusable (completely black) after reboot (it happened to me twice after removing the Intel drivers from HP; I had to boot in safe mode in order to use the display and install a driver; another solution was to use a rescue disk and from there to go back to a system restore point.)

So, the answer to the question is probably that without some drivers (at least the generic ones that come with the OS installation) there is no access to the hardware.

Also, accessing information on the hardware - its "specifications" - depends on the driver up to some point: using a driver intended for a Radeon (TM) HD 7400M GPU while I had Radeon (TM) HD 6470M displayed the wrong info that my GPU was 7400M. But even so (or, I imagine, with some generic driver) it was possible to see the hardware ID, which led to identifying the hardware (see images in the question and the comments made by and31415).

How To Find Unknown Device Drivers By Their Vendor & Device ID.

I cannot rule out the possibility of seeing some info on the graphics card in BIOS. That BIOS info is also visible in this way.

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    I can confirm that the description entirely depends on the information stored on the .inf file, which can be misleading/generic at times. The most important bit is the hardware ID, though. As for the display troubles, Windows should revert a basic Standard VGA Graphics Adapter driver (which is used while in Safe Mode, too) upon uninstalling the required drivers, but for some reason that didn't happen. Good to know, at least.
    – and31415
    Aug 10, 2014 at 16:43
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Hit Win + R and start the program dxdiag.

Wait for the progress bar to disappear and open the Display tab (there might be more than one in your case; just make sure to find the one mentioning your Radeon card).

Unter Device you should see the actual chip being listed, no matter which driver you've got installed.

As an alternative, you can download GPU-Z to get even more details.

Also note that you should just use the latest driver HP provides. You should then be able to adjust fan speed in the control center.

  • Try right-clicking the ATI icon in your system tray and pick Hardware.
  • Select Overclocking Settings and open the Fan tab.
  • There should be an option to enable manual fan control; just keep in mind that wrong settings might make your system unstable or might even break it (should usually be prevented by basic hardware/BIOS safeguards).
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  • Are you sure that dxdiag displays the full info before any drivers are installed? even with all installed as in the last image dxdiag only sees the intel card. now i have the intel driver on and cannot test if intel card is seen before the driver is there. the same for GPU-Z: i looked up this program before the AMD driver being installed and no proper info was provided. after installing the driver, GPU-Z can see it as it should... As stated in the question, there are no win7/32-bit drivers for my computer from the HP websites.
    – user162573
    Aug 5, 2014 at 9:51
  • Also, no proper way of installing an AMD/ATI interface+tray icon feature like I was able to install for Intel. More details on what happens in this question and my answer thereunder. - Because of these problems I am asking this question here.
    – user162573
    Aug 5, 2014 at 9:52
  • as presented in the answer linked in my previous comment: I was able to install the AMD driver only by updating in Device Manager and then searching a bunch of folders with all sort of packages (trying to run exe of those packages would only un-pack them in C:/AMD; directing the updater there, a driver is installed); then a proper name of the device appears now when checking in Device manager or with the tools you mentioned (which didn't happen before installing the driver in this way). But even so, there is no ATI/AMD GUI with tray icon etc and therefore no advanced options like for fac etc
    – user162573
    Aug 5, 2014 at 10:25
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You said you had Linux installed,

I'm using the program "hardinfo 0.5.1-1.1ubuntu5" found in the Ubuntu software center as "System Profiler and Benchmark" that can show me all the hardware installed.

Under PCI devices (drag down the dividing bar if you don't see anything), it tells me I got a NVIDIA Corporation GK106[Geforce GTX 660] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

This might be an alternative route to show what device you precisely have installed.

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