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I have an ASUS A43SD laptop with a built-in NVIDIA 610m graphics card. I recently switched to Windows 7 64-bit and in the process did away with the NVIDIA driver I had installed. As far as I can tell, the computer has no idea it even contains a dedicated graphics card now. The Intel Graphics and Media control panel, which is installed, seems to handle DirectX rendering and offers other 3D settings, and although I haven't tried any 3D-intensive stuff yet, I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary about display or performance.

So, what exactly is my graphics card doing?

Is my computer using the graphics card at the moment? Should I still try and download the NVIDIA driver to take advantage of the card? Is there anything I should know about priority or conflicts among these control panels/drivers?

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    What model Asus laptop is it? – Paul Mar 23 '13 at 2:43
  • Edited to show. – Isaac Lubow Mar 23 '13 at 2:46
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    Windows 7 probably got some sort of driver for it, as it does that by default typically. Does your device manager show anything unrecognized or other errors in the video department? – nerdwaller Mar 23 '13 at 3:18
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You installed a generic video driver from Intel. This is supported - see section on that linked page called "Work-around", describing how it is possible to use the Intel graphics driver in such a manner, though they recommend against it.

Even though your 610M video processor is considered entry-level, there will be dedicated functionality that only a driver from NVidia will be capable of tapping into, such as:

  1. Shader Model 5.0 support
  2. NVIDIA CUDA
  3. HDMI support
  4. HD audio, which is tied to the mobile video card
  5. HD video decoding

I suspect if you were to play an HD movie using your current setup, then install the latest supported 610M NVidia drivers, you'd find a noticable performance difference.

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