When installing display drivers, should I download for dedicated or integrated?

I've decided to clean install my AMD graphics drivers. I'm following this guide, and I'm at the bit where I need to download the new driver from this page. The guide specifically says to manually select my driver instead of auto-detecting, so that's what I'm doing. I find myself stuck at the first question though because I have two AMD graphics cards in my computer: an integrated APU, and a dedicated card.

Integrated: AMD A8-6600K APU

Dedicated: MSI R9 380

Currently I have all of my monitors hooked into the dedicated card, but in the past I've connected some to the integrated one, and may do that in the future. I'd like all of the heavy lifting to be done by the dedicated card though naturally.

I'm not familiar with graphics drivers, so I wouldn't want to chance installing the dedicated and then finding out my computer relied on the integrated in some way and I downloaded the wrong one. Which display driver should I download first/exclusively? The one for the dedicated, or the one for the integrated? Am I able to install a second AMD driver on top of that afterwards, or will its install manager only let me download one?

Drew

Posted 2016-08-25T17:40:18.987

Reputation: 1 809

You can't have two different version of AMD drivers installed on your system, you should alway use, the lastest drivers supported by your hardware. In your case the current version is supported. – Ramhound – 2016-08-25T18:36:40.487

Answers

You want the dedicated driver. The integrated driver is something that Windows is already most likely controlling with generic drivers as it is. You shouldn't have any need to install both drivers. The APU drivers are already there.

If you choose, you can probably install both of them without any issue as they are totally separate entities. However, there's really not a reason to. I don't believe you can use both of them at the same time, and for those instances where you just need to use the integrated card for some reason (I can't think of why), if it worked the last time it was used, be pragmatic and leave it alone.

Kevin R.

Posted 2016-08-25T17:40:18.987

Reputation: 174

"The APU drivers are already there." Even if I'm doing a clean install? – Drew – 2016-08-25T18:10:43.143

Think about what happens when you do a full hard drive format and redo everything. The integrated graphics still work (probably at 800x600) until the installation is completed, at which point there's either a Windows generic driver handling it, or something was updated/downloaded during the install. – Kevin R. – 2016-08-25T18:23:49.980

Oh, I thought you were implying the AMD (not generic) driver would still be there -- sorry! – Drew – 2016-08-25T18:28:22.157

@Drew - The generic drivers would a recent version released by AMD. There is no such thing has "generic" drivers with Intel, AMD, and Nvidia anymore. All 3 have stable release drivers distrubuted by Windows Update. – Ramhound – 2016-08-25T18:37:53.043

On a desktop you only need the dedicated drivers since your monitor is directly connected to the graphics card.

Other scenario (Not for you specifically): On a laptop though, you should also install the integrated graphics drivers since Windows will usually use the integrated graphics for it's UI and only use the dedicated GPU for other tasks.

JustDenDimi

Posted 2016-08-25T17:40:18.987

Reputation: 170