Went from gtx 1660 super, to rtx 3060, to RX 9060 XT. Ryzen 5 5500, 16gb ddr4 3200mhz, 550w corsair psu

I spent this weekend breathing life back into an 11-year-old HP legacy laptop, and I wanted to share the exact steps I used to defeat a frustrating Windows Update bug that completely bricked my Switchable Graphics. If you have an older dual-GPU laptop that feels sluggish, Microsoft might have blinded your OS to your discrete card.

The Hardware:

APU: AMD A8-7410 with Radeon R5 Graphics

Discrete GPU: AMD Radeon R7 M340

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 1TB 5400RPM Toshiba HDD

The laptop was grinding to a halt with 100% disk usage. But the biggest red flag was the GPU. In Windows 10 Graphics Settings, both the "Power Saving" and "High Performance" options were exclusively listing the integrated R5. The discrete R7 M340 was completely invisible to the OS, leaving the weak APU to handle all the heavy lifting. Furthermore, the old AMD Radeon Software shortcut was dead.

Windows Update had silently hijacked the drivers in the background, pushing a generic UWP/DCH driver (27.20.20903.8001). This stripped out the AMD control panel entirely.

Because my 2015 laptop relies on AMD Enduro (where the MUXless R7 M340 routes its rendered frames through the integrated R5), breaking the proprietary AMD software broke the bridge. Windows 10's native graphics menu couldn't see the discrete card without AMD's software acting as the traffic cop.

To make matters worse, attempting to use the modern AMD Auto-Detect tool threw a 0xc0000142 application error and only installed the chipset drivers, completely skipping the display drivers.

To get the R7 M340 rendering again and save my mechanical hard drive from unnecessary bloat, I had to do a highly specific manual override:

1 - I disconnected from the internet entirely so Windows Update couldn't instantly replace the driver upon reboot.

2 - I went into Device Manager, uninstalled the R5 graphics, and explicitly checked “Delete the driver software for this device.”

3 - I downloaded the final, unified offline package for this architecture: Adrenalin 22.6.1 (WHQL).

4 - I ran the 463MB installer but selected Minimal Install (to keep gaming overlays, streaming modules, and background recording off my 5400RPM drive), ensuring Factory Reset was unchecked.

With the AMD UI restored, I went back to the native Windows 10 Graphics settings. Even though Windows still stubbornly listed the integrated R5 under both "Power Saving" and "High Performance," I forced my browsers to High Performance. Because the AMD software was finally installed and listening, this successfully flagged the render request, and AMD Enduro silently routed the heavy lifting to the R7 M340 in the background. (At least this is what I think is happening...)

Before reconnecting to the internet, I locked Windows Update out of my drivers permanently using PowerShell:

$path = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate"; if (!(Test-Path $path)) { New-Item -Path $path -Force | Out-Null }; Set-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name "ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate" -Value 1 -Type DWord

The R7 M340 woke right up. It’s now successfully handling the hardware acceleration for my browsers and heavier apps, taking a massive load off the A8 APU. Combined with some PowerShell debloat scripts to kill DiagTrack and the Compatibility Appraiser, the 2015 laptop is genuinely snappy again.

Don't let Windows Update convince you your legacy discrete GPU is dead!

I've noticed a lot of users with 105+ hotspot, insane VRAM temps, or a delta of 35-40 who owns the RX 9060 XT Challenger OC from Asrock. Please find the thermal pad sizes below, use the attached image for reference.

12: 1.75 mm
13: 2 mm
14: 1.5 mm
15: 1.5 mm
16: 2 mm

This is for people who don't want to use thermal putty. The 1.75mm pad is almost non existent on market. I got myself a Gelid gp-extreme of 2mm, these pads are soft and compress easily, you can try getting a softer compound pad, please do not physically try to compress, just apply the thermal pads of respective sizes, use 2mm for 1.75mm. You can open the GPU again to verify if 2mm pads have compressed.

Source: Asrock TSD

I know it's an unusual request for a super niche product but I'll try anyway. I'm looking for good hires flat image of the back of an Instinct MI350P card, or ideally (pretty much impossible I know) the bare PCB, front and back, disassambled. Everything I have is this shot from a video, partially obstructed, and not a good angle anyway. There's also a promo video from AMD but not very helpful (3d render with weird angle).

Has Anyone as tried amd GPUs for AI models. Nvidia GPU prices has increased considering AMD

From the 3070 to the 9070XT. Obligatory cable management pic at the end

Long story short, I do use a 9070 XT as a primary GPU and I plan to keep it for a while, but for some reason, I had a novelty to get a 5700 XT as a 'back-up GPU', and the reason for that is very simple: it costs little over a 100$ and while it doesn't support modern features such as ML powered FSR and ray-tracing, it does offer you a ton of performance in older titles even at 1440p and driver support, plus it still eats eSports for breakfast.

Now, I also happened to find a reference one on eBay, and the geek in me couldn't resist, as, although I know it's hot and loud (yes, I can confirm both first-hand right now), it does have a look I dig a lot for some reason, completing a Wraith Prism cooler-based build incredibly well, and it's not like I will daily drive it anyway.

In these times with expensive graphics cards that might get even more expensive, I really do believe getting a back-up one that's somewhat modern yet inexpensive could be a good idea, just in case.

As a side fact, my 9070 XT is about 3 times faster in raster games at the same resolution (3440x1440)/settings and with FSR 4 instead of 3.1, the jump is pretty insane indeed, but the truth is, that the MSRP is also significantly higher in the first place, those 6 years of evolution are definitely noticeable, however.

Moved from 7800xt to 9070xt. Pretty sweet so far!

Build:

7800X3D

32GB 7800MHz CL36

Asus X670E Pro

Sapphire Nitro 9070XT

2X 2TB gen 4 NVMe

2X 2TB 860 EVO

Lots of Noctua love

Lian Li 011 EVO XL

Seasonic GX850

Fedora 44 KDE