Dell Laptop not using dedicated graphics card - Radeon 6630M - help!

[Brad]

I see - thanks mate makes sense! Would a GT525 be a better mobile option with a slower CPU or would I not notice much difference?
Cheers

Well, despite everything I said Dolphin is very CPU intensive. Once a gfx card is good enough (whatever that is) it all comes down to the cpu. In short, I don't really know guv!

[EvilBoris]

Check your laptop's power/battery settings.

Set it to high performance and see if that does anything

[Escape-To-88]

Bump the settings up and try with both cards, see which is faster

Sorry mate? This was the initial problems - I can't select the cards from Dolphin it only comes up with Intel HD graphics under the dispay adapter options.

Set it to high performance and see if that does anything

Already done mate.

Well, despite everything I said Dolphin is very CPU intensive. Once a gfx card is good enough (whatever that is) it all comes down to the cpu. In short, I don't really know guv

Yeah I know mate, that's why I thought mine turbo boosting to 3.2/4 -ish would be faster than my old Mac at 2.9mhz.

[Brad]

Well, you're moving from a desktop processor to a mobile one. A mobile sandy bridge i5 has half the cache of a desktop one, only has 2 cores and is more like the old i5s really. That processor is a downgrade from the one in the iMac I think, unless the iMac had a mobile CPU too? The mobile CPUs use half the power of the desktop ones so something's got to give I guess.

[Escape-To-88]

Hmm, yeah I knew they had less power - didn't know it was half or so, but that would make sense.
Might be worth moving to a desktop in that case!
Cheers.

[randombs]

Sorry, I thought you could pick specific programs to use the Radeon in the Radeon's settings so I thought you could force the Radeon for Dolphin. I imagine you've already tried that, though.

[Escape-To-88]

No worries mate thanks for the help, I think technically you can in catalyst control by setting a program to high performance, I'm just not convinced it works propwrly!