PC Drivers & Software

[marcjero]

Hi,

I upgraded an aging HP 17 laptop lately and I did a fresh Windows 10 21H2 install. After installation I had few issues :

-The CPU was overloaded most of the time and cpu clock was steady at 2.2 Ghz. When switching to the top performance policy turbo boost started to work (3ghz peak) but only under low load. On high load the CPU clock was returning back to 2.2 ghz. Strange because I was expecting the opposite behavior !

-2 Devices weren't recognized by Windows : AS4 and SD card reader

Windows 10 suggested me to install few additional and optional  drivers in Windows Update : ethernet card driver, sound card driver and SD card reader driver. I installed these 3 guys.

Windows 10 also suggested me to install what it called AMD SYSTEM and AMD MEDIA drivers. Looks like the AMD SYSTEM is just the SMBUS driver. I didn't install these 2 drivers and preferred to try to install the drivers from AMD directly.  (https://www.amd.com/fr/support). The installer detected my system and installed the display driver v 21.5.2 and chipset drivers (AS4, SMBUS and a third one) v 3.10.08.506

After that the system ran smoother than before. Turbo boost was working as expected. However performance in Chrome was disappointing and video playback in youtube was choppy sometimes

I checked the system latency and noticed that acpi.sys had quite high DPC latency values time to time (up to 10ms) but this happens after letting the computer idling for 10 or 20 minutes so maybe it"s just the system shutting down devices to save energy. I disabled the dynamic tick but didn't observer any difference.

But I had a look at the Radeon software setting and enabled the antilag feature. Looks like this fixed the youtube issue and at the same time I see that CPU is  loading less. I was surprised because I was expecting this to impact games but not Chrome browser.

So I have 3 questions regarding my configuration :

-Did I use the best drivers combo for this aging computer ? The drivers provided by HP are outdated (2015). I'm wondering the the latest AMD drivers are still fine for a such old hardware.

-Is it common to observer such ACPI.sys latency ?

-Does the antilag option  can really help the video playback in Chrome or is it just a placebo effect ?

Thanks for sharing your ideas and recommendations.

[elstaci]

First does HP say your laptop supports upgrading to Windows 10?

You can check here at HP Windows 10 Compatibility List and see if your laptop is listed as being Windows 10 compatible: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_3913140-3876462-16

Seems like your A8-7050 is a OEM Processor that doesn't have any AMD Driver to download from. But you are using R5 Graphics so you can try this last AMD Driver for the R5 (A8-7100 Mobile) and see if it works better: https://www.amd.com/en/support/apu/amd-series-processors/amd-a8-series-apu-for-laptops/a8-7100-radeo...

Make sure you make a Restore point before installing this driver in case anything goes wrong or you can't uninstall the driver.

[marcjero]

Hi,

yes the laptop is Windows 10 compatible and was running Windows 10 out of the box. The Radeon installer already installed  the video driver you mention (A8-7100 21.5.2) and even installed the latest AMD chipset drivers.

[elstaci]

Sorry your original post wasn't clear if you had Windows 10 installed before except that you just made a fresh Windows 10 installation.

You Integrated Graphics R5 driver is the last AMD Driver update. AMD Doesn't support your APU with anymore Graphics driver updates.

Just make sure your Windows is fully updated and have the latest BIOS and CHIPSET installed.

Try using your Laptop Updating software to update all of your laptop drivers or use Device Manager to update your drivers or Windows Update.

[marcjero]

Sorry it was not clear. I upgraded the hardware a bit and  reinstalled Windows 10.

Bios is up to date. Installation is fresh so I suppose the Windows drivers are the latest. Latest AMD drivers (chipset 3.10.08.506 and video 21.5.2) are installed. So I think it's fine.

I wanted to be sure that I can use these drivers with this old hardware so it's perfect.

Could anyone confirm that the nolag option of Radeon software can improve the Chrome smoothness  especially for video playback ?