HP Drivers

In the past I have posted about stability issues with PA. The common response was that my drivers were out of date(I had 8.8.0 and the latest was 13.something). I was told to update my drivers. However this is a problem because my laptop is an HP, for those of you who have dealt with HP products you already know the problem. For those of you who have had the privilege of not using HP products here is the problem with them. HP puts custom drivers for AMD and intel graphics into their laptops. If you are lucky they will support them for 2 weeks(Ok a little exaggerated but almost true). Then you are essentially left with a $1000 paper weight. You get left behind in the dust as programs evolve to take advantage of all the new graphics technology(Like PA) and you can not update because HP uses special HP drivers and if you use other drivers something will go wrong and break. I have tried beta drivers or 3rd party drivers that I have found either break the display in some way or do not install. I have asked some other communities but they either did not know enough or had no clue. My question is are there any ways that I can redo my system(Doing that in a couple weeks anyway) or tinker with it in any way so that the drivers directly from AMD or other third party drivers will work on my HP laptop.

Tl;dr:HP is a horrible company because they do not support their drivers.

What I have tried and why it didn't work

• AMD 13.8 Beta drivers[Note: Right now AMD seems to be having problems with there website so link might be broken](It seemed to install but the screen brightness was stuck at 0 so I barely see)
  
• Leshcat's Catalyst 13.8 Beta(BSOD while installing and brightness broke, yet again)

Actually you're first person here who have serious problems with generic drivers. Usually they only break Fn hotkeys.

For HP?

Let's say it's not really mater who produce notebook. All hardware is standard and not differs from one manufacturer to another. All HP-specific things mostly on software level (in Windows).

On that I am afraid you would be correct(As fare as I know). When you try and install standard AMD drivers for the graphics card it says the software is not able to install, not because it is incompatible but b/c the notebook manufacturer has disallowed it with some sort of code or something.

Yes it's usually this way. Probably your notebook is especial, but most of times.

Also if you tried generic drivers, can you explain what exactly happen when you installed it?

This isn't really good explanation.

PS: Other thing I don't really know any notebook manufacturer who update those cripped drivers more than a year after notebook produced.

One possibility that used to be an option is third party driver "optimizers" like Omega. SXX, do you know if they're still good drivers? Things like this: http://www.omegadrivers.net/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=section&id=1&Itemid=54

I used them years ago and they were often quite good, but Nvidia's have been so solid for so long, I haven't needed to use third party in ages.

You understand my post wrong.
I mean all notebook manufacturers abandon their "special" graphics drivers, there is nothing special with HP.

Oops.

Can you explain what exactly happen when you installed generic drivers? (e.g 13.10 Beta)

I think it's all artifacts of the long past. Currently there too much notebooks and everything updated way too fast to make anything like that. But some fixes still available on this forum:
http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/

I sure you remember times when you can buy cheaper GPU, install patched driver and get more expensive one for same price. But you know that currently most functions disabled in hardware, so nobody patch drivers these days.

You just don't use cheap laptops anymore.

Actually there still many manufacturers who modify drivers/hotkeys or install their own "super cool non standard tools directly from china" and some people still buy those laptops and have tons of problems with them.

Well first I use this tool and it says This
Then I install the driver Beta anyways and pretty much it all works but the screen brightness is so low that you can pretty much not read it.

Can you post what exactly model of notebook you have?

Also can you try to completely disable power-saving mode in Windows?

In the DxDiag System Model: HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook PC
To be even more specific it the HP PAvilion dv7 1245dx
Also don't have power saving on

Okay I'm have few things you can check, but first one important question.
Did you disabled integrated Intel card in BIOS? Or you using Catalyst control center to run games on discrete GPU?

I'm not sure. Could you give me some directions on how to check that. If it helps I'm on fixed graphics mode.

First you can just reboot your laptop and check BIOS settings if there option to switch between integrated/discrete graphics.

Also if you have both card enabled it's mean you previously configured switchable graphics. E.g set games (like PA) to run on discrete AMD graphics card.

You can also check PA log files in this directory:
C:\Users\ YOUR_WINDOWS_USERNAME \AppData\Local\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\log\
First 10-20 lines need to contain something like that:

Code:

[05:21:37.546]INFO GL_VENDOR: X.Org
[05:21:37.564] INFO GL_RENDERER: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAYMAN
[05:21:37.564] INFO GL_VERSION: 3.0 Mesa 9.2.0-devel
[05:21:37.564] INFO GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION: 1.30

There will be different values, but the same structure.

I'm really doubt it's will help, but it's only we can check actually.

Here are the first couple lines of my log

Code:

[17:17:53.280] INFO GL_VENDOR: ATI Technologies Inc.
[17:17:53.280] INFO GL_RENDERER: Radeon (TM) HD 6490M
[17:17:53.280] INFO GL_VERSION: 4.1.10600 Compatibility Profile Context
[17:17:53.280] INFO GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION: 4.10

Have you configured PA specially to run on AMD/ATI gpu? E.g like in this video:


If not you probably need try to enable integrated card and bios... Or even try to disable discrete card. Probably it's also might control display brightness