Hi Guys,
I have a Dell Inspiron 15R 5520 laptop with dual graphics (Intel HD 4000 and AMD Raedon HD 7670M) and i faced the same problem. After searching for some time i figured out that this was not a problem for DELL laptops only instead all the laptops having dual graphics card build after 2011/2012 have the exact same problem irrelavant of the brand whether it is a DELL laptop or HP laptop or Acer laptop. The Intel Graphics Card is set as primary while the nVidia/ATI/AMD graphics cards are just Co-Graphics card that are used through the Intel Graphics card in case if we apply High Performance settings for an application/Game. The dedicated Graphics card can never be used directly, you must also have noticed this even after applying the High Performance settings the games do not detect the dedicated graphics card, the games and other softwares like 3Dmark will only detect Intel Graphics card.
The Customer Care Representatives will tell you that this cannot be changed as it is how the system is designed at hardware level. But it is not true there are some hidden tabs in the BIOS of these laptops, My laptop uses InsydeH2o BIOS and there are two hidden Tabs in this BIOS "Advanced" and "Power" Tabs, These Tabs contains some options that can potentially harm a laptop and your laptop may become useless so these are hidden. These Tabs exists in almost all the BIOS models whether it is Insyde or Phoenix or any other BIOS model. In the "Advanced" Tab an option exists by the name of "Video Configuration" and by using this option we can select the primary graphics card for our system if we select the dedicated graphics card then the intel graphics card will not be used and the true potential of the dedicated graphics card will be available for us.
Many programmers have Modded thier BIOS to show these options, and to fully utilize the dedicated graphics card, one such example is
shown in the following link
www.sevenforums.com/.../185993-acer-laptop-switchable-graphics-using-i7-amd-radeon-13.html
But Modding a BIOS is very dangerous and very difficult, and it is even more difficult and dangerous if your BIOS uses UEFI methods. I would never advise you to Mod your BIOS as you may end up bricking your laptop. so the only option left for us is to appeal to our vendors (DELL, HP, Acer, Toshiba, Compaq etc) to give us the option to select the Primary graphics card in the BIOS, It should be our decision to decide whether we want to conserve our laptop battery or we want to utilize our graphics card to its full potential.
This is like Buying a Ferrari and the company forces you to use it only as a decoration so that you can reduce the Petrol cost/Power consumption. We have paid for a dedicated graphics card and now we are forced to use it only as a decoration, only half of the dedicated graphics card is ever Used, and only 1/4th of the dedicated graphics memory is used all the load is transferred to the RAM as Intel graphics card utilizes System RAM.
So kindly spread this message to every forum and community, appeal to the vendors to release a BIOS update in which the option to select the Dedicated graphics card is provided, and stop buying Dual Graphics laptops until this problem is fixed.
Thank You.