Latitude E6540 with BOTH Intel and AMD Graphics Controllers?

Thanks...  always a wide learning curve with a new system...  :)

Is there a screen that lets you dedicate the AMD Radeon card for all use, and not the intel Card. I have all items set to high performance for the programs i am running and still having issues compared to an older computer with a stand alone video card.

any screen shots would be appreciated of the control center.

OK, this "verified" answer does not work at all on my E6540 laptop. I see nothing for selection of a GPU, only selections for power management.

We have all Dell laptops at our business and always ordered the performance video chipset.  For the previous models that had the Intel/NVidia combo video (E6420, E6430), we went into the BIOS under video and disabled Optimus.  At that point the Intel dual mode dropped out and you had only the nVidia video.  This permitted boot video while docked and otherwise made the laptop behave normally.

The E6540 is using a dual mode Intel/AMD chipset instead of the Intel/NVidia and does not have Optimus as an option to disable under Video in the BIOS.

Please add a BIOS option to use the AMD chip full-time so that we can disable dual mode video for this model!

Thanks!

I know in the Alienware laptops you can switch from Intel graphics to Nvidia graphics by just pressing Fn+F7 and that works great. So why can we not do that with the E6540?

Is it possible to just disable the Intel graphics in the "Device Manager"?

Because I cannot get the Radeon graphics to come on no matter what I set the Catalyst Control Center to.

The Alienware uses a true hardware-switching video system - both GPUs have a hardware connection to the screen (this is called a multiplexer, or MUX design).

The Latitude uses a MUXless, software controlled video system - only the Intel GPU has a hardware connection to the display panel.  ALL video data - even if it is processed by the AMD GPU - runs through the Intel GPU aboard the CPU, so the Intel GPU will always show active to Windows and most applications.  It is the driver set that controls the distribution of GPU load between the two GPUs - normally only the Intel GPU is active.  The AMD GPU is called into use when higher performance is needed (or specified, since you can do that with the Catalyst Control Center).

it is true that MUX-based hardware video is of higher performance overall - but the MUX-less design is more power-efficient and cheaper to implement - making it suitable not only for low-end consumer sysetms (Inspirons) but also business-class systems where high the highest level of video performance is rarely (if ever) needed.

When you say it finally switched, how can you tell that it  switched? Is it that you're looking at the advanced options in the "Adjust Resolution" screen, then selecting the "Adapter" tab? Or is there some other method to see which one is active? Thanks, -Tom.

Well I do not perform the same procedure that he does to get the cards to flip.  I force a hard shutdown by holding the power button until the computer powers off then select  "Start Windows normally" in the boot menu.  The way I can tell if the cards have "flipped" is start a game that shows the frame rate if frames are high then I know they have flipped if I have low to 0 frames then the cards are not flipping.

I have this same issue knowing which card is being used.  I am also having an issue in applications with the fonts being to large. It's only one app, but all attempts to resolve this the normal ways you would fail.  The only thing different with this laptop over the others is the AMD card.  The rest are all Intel 4600 or Nvidia K600s and work perfectly.  Anyone see the font size issue?

Make sure the display settings on fonts are standard.  In AutoCAD, it will scale drawings based on that setting and creates strange error messages with useless meanings.

Right-Click Desktop -> Personalize -> Display (lower left corner)

Make sure they are set to Smaller or Medium.  Larger messes with a lot of software.

Hi guys. I'm going through the same issue

No matter what I do, I can't get my e6540 to use the AMD GPU.

I've tried setting apps in Nvidia Catalyst Control Panel
I've tried to disable Intel HD 4600 in Windows
I've searched the BIOS for an option to disable the Intel, but no luck.. nothing found
I've tried the double-boot solution suggested in this thread, but also no luck.

So please, anyone from Dell....How can I make my e6540 finally use the Radeon?? How??

Thanks

If you have an Optimus/nVidia control panel, your GPU is nVidia, not AMD.  Use that to enable the GPU with the apps you want.