Video Card Issues (Intel HD 3000 + NVIDIA GT 555M)

[idata]

I bought a Dell Laptop XPS L702X (P09E002) with Windows 7 (64bit) which includes both the:

•Intel HD Graphics 3000 (manufacturer driver: 8.15.10.2321)•NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M (driver: 285.62)

Because of the 2 Video Cards I am running into a series of issues with applications/games. By default Windows uses the Intel HD Graphics Card as the default display driver, which can not be changed however under the NVIDIA Control Panel (NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings) you can specify if you want Applications to run using the Intel HD Graphics Driver or NVIDIA Driver.

Ideally I would like to use the NVIDIA Driver for everything because of the incredible performance however setting this as a default causes further issues especially with anything which does not use DirectX11 and DirectX11 needs to emulate i.e DX7, DX8, DX9, DX10 etc. The issues I am referring to are visual artifacts and rendering issues. This is a big concern as there are many things I use run in DirectX9 and must make the choice of:

A.) use the Intel HD Graphics driver = slow performance + no visual/rendering issues

B.) use NVIDIA driver = fast performance + visual/rendering issues

Just to confirm using the NVIDIA Driver and a DirectX11 supported program works perfectly.

In addition I connected a HDMI cable the other day to my Laptop to my LG TV but could not get this to work. I found in the Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel > Monitor / TV Settings message "Monitor / TV Settings are not supported". I am assuming that the provided manufacturer driver has either not included this or disabled it?

I tried to install the Intel Driver provided on this website using the automatic installer only to receive a message which read something like this "a manufactuer driver has been detected and you must contact them for an updated driver"

I am not having much luck so thought I would post and see if anyone can point me in the right direction.Thanks!

[idata]

I have recorded a short video showing some of the issues described in my original post.

Hopefully this can assist with finding a solution

Video: http://youtu.be/XVkGNZkCCr0 http://youtu.be/XVkGNZkCCr0

[idata]

I am also having this issue. I was given a new ASUS X53SD laptop with the Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics and the NVIDIA GeForce 610M graphics card.

The laptop display is hard wired into the Intel graphics card so it can't be disabled without losing the display. No matter what combination of settings I select between the two cards, games will not run properly.

Diablo III has constant screen freezes every few seconds that last three to ten seconds then the game 'speeds up' as if the frames that were frozen are being sent to the display at a faster rate than normal to 'catch up'.

When looking at the NVIDIA PhysX interface in the NVIDIA Control Panel it shows that the Intel graphics are directly connected to the display while the NVIDIA graphics are not. Is it possible that the NVIDIA card has to output the rendered frames to the Intel graphics which sends them to the display? If this is the case, could it be that the NVIDIA graphics are rendering and outputting frames to the Intel graphics faster than the Intel graphics can process and send them to the display?

I've checked that I have the most up-to-date drivers from the ASUS website and I cannot find any way to alleviate the issue when playing games.

[idata]

Since my original post I have reinstalled Windows 7 along with Service Pack 1 but have disabled the Windows Automatic Updates as I had read on another forum that there is a particular Windows Hotfix which is the cause of all these troubles. Since doing this all reported issues have been resolved. I am not sure which particular Hotfix is the cause and I do not intend to install them one-by-one to find out!

By default the system uses the Integrated Graphics Card (Intel) however you can specify in the NVIDIA Control Panel specific applications to use the NVIDIA driver or you can simply right-click your application/shortcut icon and select "Run with Graphic Processor > High Performance NVIDIA driver" etc.

Regarding Diablo III aparently there is a compatability issue with the current NVIDIA drivers and Diablo III, regardless of what NVIDIA Hardware you have. I believe this should be fixed in the next release of NVIDIA drivers.