Should I update or not? (Intel/AMD Hybrid Switchable Graphics)

Hello!

I have a Lenovo Ideapad 330s-15ikb 81F500GYHV series notebook with Intel Core i5-8250u and AMD Radeon 540 graphics. These are seperate chips on the mainboard, they are not built into just one like some newer Intel chips come with an embedded AMD GPU. This one is not like that, I can see two chips!

AMD Driver version is 25.20.14002.1 this one is from Lenovo's website
Intel Driver is 26.20.100.7323 this one is from Windows Update (originally I had an older driver from Lenovo but it was automatically updated)

I'm running Win10 20H2 latest stable build. No updates detected. All drivers are from Lenovo except those that WinUpdate automatically updated.

So recently I started to get update notifications for an AMD driver from the Radeon GUI Settings app. There is no update on Lenovo's site, it still lists the old driver.

SHould I update or not?

Hint: I did play around with Windows Insider builds too (but reverted), well the new beta build does install new graphics drivers for both chips. But not this one. It installs one that is a bit older than this. But not the stable Windows build, that one doesn't install any updates except for that Intel update.

You can see the original drivers on Lenovo: laptops and netbooks :: 300 series :: 330s 15ikb :: 81f5 :: 81f500gyhv - Lenovo Support GB

- - - Updated - - -

Hm, I forgot to add the screens. Here they are

Thank you very much! Not really, i was just puzzled with this amd radeon app bumping this update notification every single day, even though it is recommending a generic driver.

ish4d0w said:

Thank you very much! Not really, i was just puzzled with this amd radeon app bumping this update notification every single day, even though it is recommending a generic driver.

There is no Intel and AMD belt into single chip , but there is an AMD APU which is a GPU + CPU combined so with it you do not need an Intel , is an AMD APU faster than an Intel and a GPU , if you do a fair test for 2 GPUs of same clock speeds one on an APU and the other is a second GPU over Intel that one will specifically do better in benchmarks as it gets its separate cooling fan and things being offloaded to the embedded Intel Graphics , so bottom line the architecture you have is better than the single chip APUs mostly despite people tend to think other wise , however you need upgrades when you feel your current graphics card is striving with new games anyways .

I am very happy to report that the Windows Insider program brings NEW, up-to-date drivers for BOTH of my graphis card - in this hybrid/switchable system that my notebook has.

Once again, I have Lenovo Ideapad 330s-15ikb 81F500GYHV which has Intel Core i5-8250u (with Intel UHD 620 Graphics) and a seperate AMD Radeon 540 graphics chip, working in a hybrid fashion.

I was afraid to manually upgrade my drivers but upon joining the slow-ring of WIndows Insider program, I am now getting fresh, 2021 drivers.

My goals that I wanted to achieve, were, of course to eliminate all the issues that could arise from using old drivers, including potential security and compatibility issues. Lenovo has 2018 and 2019 graphics drivers on their website for this particular notebook, which work seemingly fine but these were made for a previous version of Windows 10 (I believe 1803 - so an older one), they were not really tested for 20H2 and 21H1 I'm afraid. At least this is what the manual text file says so for the Intel driver.

I am happy to report that I am now using brand-new 2021 drivers, still customized (after all, Lenovo still provides custom drivers it seems, it's just not on their website yet, but rolling out for testing for Windows insiders - great). So if anybody else is facing this issue, this is what you should do. I am seeing improvements because I no longer get FPS drops in some games, which was a known issue with the old AMD driver, now fixed. The old 2018-2019 intel driver had issues too, but those didn't really affect me, it just bothered me that I am using a version that is not tested against the latest Windows 10 version packs.

Of course one should consider that joining Windows insider does not only bring new drivers, but also experimental versions of Windows itself, too. I am fine with that since I am making daily system images anyway and most of my data is not on my system drive, also I have been using Windows insider on my other PCs for years now, but this is not something for the faint of the heart, only for "technical" people as they put it. But I presume, that, many of you who read this, are technical-oriented enough :)

I wish Lenovo would put these new drivers on their website because they work great! And I hate outdated drivers even if I face no prevalent issue! I hate it even more when I do!

cheers